


Familia Amable

by orphan_account



Category: Red Dead Redemption 2, rdr2 - Fandom
Genre: Blood, F/M, Gore, Past Abuse, Violence, War, Young Arthur Morgan, Young Dutch van der Linde, Young Hosea Matthews, harrassment, young bessie matthews, young susan grimshaw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2020-10-31 07:16:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20788979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Hosea Matthews has been in the conning business for years. It’s how he survives and sustains he and his wife, Bessie, following after Dutch Van Der Linde and his hopeful preaching about his America and the true meaning of freedom. They’re robbers, thieves, killers and murderers.So why has Dutch brought a boy back to their hideout in the San Francisco hotel?Hosea Matthews must take a closer look at himself and the man he calls his best friend in order to understand why this young boy has been dropped into his life, and what exactly he is supposed to do for him. Does he allow this teenager to become a killer like them? Does he let the boy grow into a man followed by ghosts of his past that visit only in the dark, or does he step up and make a change?*This is an alternate look to the potential outcome of the RDR universe. Credit: Squid aka Deathmallow, Hyde, PrairieMule, AM’sGF.Almost everything is an assumption.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve had to type this all out on my phone so I apologize for a bad format. Any and every input is well appreciated, positive or negative. Anything to help me improve will aid me in a better writing, and feedback will allow me to improve later chapters.

Something creaks, then the light is blocked. He can hear the careful tiptoeing of another person before the bed dips slightly and a soft hand lays over his arm. It slides up to his shoulder, then shakes him gently.

"_Hosea_." its Bessie. "Wake up, darling."

Bleary eyes open partially and he turns his tired gaze to his wife who leans over him. The bed under him seems too comfortable and relaxed. He can only make out the outline of her body, the light turning her into a featureless shadow.

"What...?" she stands and looks towards the door, Hosea feeling her hands helping to guide him to sit up. "Why are you up?"

They'd been in a hotel for the last week ever since a robbery got botched outside of San José, forcing them instead to hide in San Francisco.

"Get up-" she says. "-it's Dutch."

His first thought is Dutch got arrested. Then, maybe Susan finally had enough and killed him herself. But, Bessie is seemingly too calm for it to be any of those, so Hosea changes his pants and haphazardly shoves his boots on before following her down the hallway.

His brown eyes roam cautiously over every door and painting, the paranoia telling him the wallpaper was watching. They continue creeping across the carpet to the final door at the end of the hall, Bessie knocking gently.

Hosea pushes the sleeve of his white union suit up while movement can be heard behind the door. Only the slow burning candle at the end is awake to hear or see them, and even then its wicker was coming to an end.

The door opens and he turns his head, seeing Susan's green eyes for only a second before she shuts it again to undo the chain latch. She steps aside and allows the couple in, Bessie hurrying inside gripping a towel in her hands.

Hosea wonders if Dutch is ill, or hurt, but the younger man is seated in the dark corner of the bedroom where the moonlight can hardly reach him.

He turns to Susan for answers. "Will anyone tell me whats going on?"

The young woman pushes her hair back and lets out an exhausted sigh. "_Dutch _brought back someone new."

_'Someone new?'_ he wonders.

Hosea turns his head from the girl at his side to the man still sitting within the shadow. He can hear water sloshing in something metallic as he crosses the floor to the foot of the bed, his eyes peering through the dark before he starts to make out the shape of a head on the pillow.

It has ratty and long hair with a cut chin that is already being cleaned. He can see the whites of the persons eyes gleaming in the moonlight as they study Bessie above them. Hosea's hand comes to wrap around the bedpost as he notices further details about the individual.

Short, malnourished, filthy with old clothes and holes in their shoes.

He realizes he's staring at a child once their eyes turn to him. They're a unique mix of blue and green, the color of a clear lakes water, and they're staring in silent fear at the newcomer.

The muscles in his jaw tighten as his boot slides back, Hosea peeling himself from the foot of the bed to turn and look at Dutch.

Dark eyes hold nothing except the reflection of the moon as he stares back. His hair is soft, so he must have gone to bed and decided during the night to find this boy. The hair hangs around one side of his face, Susan brushing the other side around the shell of his ear.

Hosea looks to the boys dirty pant legs before letting go of the post entirely to approach the younger man. Dutch is unmoving as the blond comes to his side and leans against the dresser. Bessie has distracted the boy with her gentle voice, the others unable to hear what she's saying from their side of the room.

"You're quieter than I thought you would be." Dutch murmurs.

His fingers curl into the edge of the dresser as Hosea brings in a breath. What was he supposed to say?

"I didn't know this is what Susan meant by _someone new_." he explains in return, eyes still on that ratty and mussed hair on the boys head.

Bessie's mouth curls into that kind smile he fell for and whispers something as she points to the three of them. The boy glances, then manages a smile before turning to her and whispering something in return that causes her to let out a breathy laugh.

"It's just a boy, Hosea."

"Exactly, Dutch." he snaps. "Its a boy. Do you know how to care for a boy? Do you know how old he might be, or what his name is?"

Dutch turns his head to glare at him, Susan leaning closer as she continues organizing his hair.

"He's fourteen. And no, he won't give me his name, yet."

Hosea looks back momentarily as Bessie sets the dirty towel aside, the boys green eyes following her movements. The blond taps Dutch and shrugs his head at the door to direct him out, already stepping away.

He doesn't look at the boy as he reaches the door, but he can hear Dutchs voice murmuring lowly behind him before he's joined in the hall by the younger man.

Hosea turns to him suddenly, face written with such anger it forces Dutch back a few inches.

"What are we supposed to do with a Goddamn child?" he whispers. "We're outlaws! Killers, robbers, murderous thieves! Not teachers or guardians!"

Dutch raises his hands in an attempt to calm the other down.

"Relax, Hosea-"

"Relax?" the others jaw visibly tightens in the dimly lit corridor. "You've brought a boy back to your room, and for what?"

Dutch leans into him in hopes of making Hosea step down.

"He's got a _fire _in him, my friend. A ragin' fire. He seems like the perfect type of kid for us to help. To raise."

"Doesn't he have parents?"

"He's an orphan. Told me so himself after a few meetings. He needs help-" Hosea rolls his eyes and turns away. "-Hosea, he is hurt and will keep hurtin' unless we help him. We're the best chance he's got at surviving in this world."

The blond glares at him over his shoulder before taking a few steps away in hopes of recollecting his thoughts some distance down the hall.

A large hand comes to his collar before Dutch slides his arm around Hosea's shoulders and pulls him in.

"Would you have wanted to have been left on your own back in New York? Alone, struggling to survive? What if those Indians who found you let you die out there? Whose names would you be cursing?"

The Mohawk family that found him accidentally in the New York state were moving through in hopes of getting _away_ from white people, not adopting Hosea for a short few months to heal from his wounds.

But Black Raven and She Pushes Mountains weren't cold blooded killers. They had a child, aged four that they wanted to get to safety before the military got them all.

Hosea, Dutch, Susan... they were killers and they weren't avoiding just white people. The whole world were their enemies, their victims and targets.

Bringing a boy into their survivalist workload could only end in disaster.

"We're not that family." he ends up saying.

"No." Dutch shakes his head. "Not _that_ family, but a family nonetheless. And what he needs is a place to belong, _Hosea_! A community, a family. We can give him everything this shithole city can't! Food, shelter, a place to sleep, clothes on his back and shoes on his feet. When I found him this evening, he was getting kicked-"

"_Alright_." Hosea says. Dutch's arm stiffens before he lets go, forcing the blond to look up at the wide smile on his face. "But I won't be the one taking care of him."

Dutch shakes his head, hands coming together. "Of course not... You won't regret it, my friend-" he steps away and wraps his hand around the doorknob. -oh no, you won't regret this! I can promise you."

The dented brass doorknob turns and Dutch slips into the shell of darkness, leaving Hosea to stand in the red, candlelit corridor with only his train of thought to keep him company.

\--

"His name is Arthur."

Bessie introduces the two of them properly in the hotel lobby where others are too busy to stop and notice. He's gotten washed, clean enough for Hosea to tell his hair was dusty blond and that his nose had been broken plenty of times.

The blond removes the hat from his head and offers his hand, the boy staring at it before reaching out cautiously to grasp him. Hosea shakes and the boy squeezes and tries to shake it in return.

Arthur is dressed in an old shirt of Hosea's that he'd ruined long ago, the tear in the front sewn closed but noticeable. The pants he wears had been Susan's when she disguised herself to get into a gentlemans club for a robbery. Everything is too big and wide on him, and in the light Hosea can see properly how bony and scared this five foot teenager _really_ looks.

"He's agreed to go to the doctor-" Bessie continues. "-but Dutch has already volunteered he and Susan to find a campsite outside of the city."

Hosea nods slightly and retracts his hand. The boy looks down at the floor almost instantly and the older man follows his gaze to Bessie's old pair of boots.

"I need to do some work." he says. "I'm not sure I can join you-"

"But work can wait." Bessie interrupts and lays her hand over the boys shoulder. He raises his green eyes as Hosea looks away. "You know best what a boy needs on the frontier."

So they were really taking this kid in as their own.

He shifts in discomfort before sighing and nodding, shoving the hat on his head and gesturing to the door.

"Lead the way, my darling."

Bessie smiles at young Arthur and guides him past the blond. He walks behind them quietly as the city churns around them, voices filling the air and conversation screaming around them. He realizes how quickly the city forgets them as they walk down the sidewalks with the boy beside them, wondering how in the hell a young kid like himself survived for so long.

Hosea survived a war better than he did his own home for the first sixteen years of his life; the mountains were the only thing offering forgiveness before he met Bessie.

"Do I really get my own clothes, too?" his question graces their ears in bewilderment, as if the boy was unable to believe they were kind enough to let him wear new shirts.

"Of course. Right after we go to the doctor to fix you up."

"I know when things are broken, ma'am." he explains. "Everythings still in place."

Bessie smiles at him. "Thats good that you can tell, but I mean those things we _can't_ see. Little things called germs that can really harm you, we want to stop them before they start."

Arthur seems to nod in front of Hosea, his eyes shooting over his shoulder momentarily to check to see if the older man was still there.

Hosea knew already the boy was wary of the group, mostly of the tall blond that hadn't yet warmed up to him. But he stood by his ideas; them raising a boy in conditions like this could only end badly.

The only good side he could see was Bessie's ability to intervene at the best of times. It kept Hosea from becoming nothing but a killer to causing him to help and recognize kindness at the best of times. Maybe she could do something to make Arthur a good man despite who his to-be adopted fathers would be.

He holds the door for them to enter the doctors, but Arthur steps back in fear. All Bessie needs to do is raise her hand to him and speak a few encouraging words before the boy is bowing his head and hurrying in.

She follows, but stops Hosea in the doorway with her hand on his chest. The other stumbles and wraps his hand around her wrist, brows furrowing.

"What?"

"Go get some provisions ahead of time." she tells him. "So we won't have to listen to Dutch complain when we get to camp."

"I was going to go fishing-" but she's already gently pushing him back out the door.

Hosea shoves his hands in his pockets as his wife approaches the front desk, the blond glancing to the boy sitting in the chairs lining one wall before he turns away and marches down the street.

San Francisco was cold and the wind from the bay blew unforgiving gusts into him as he left the doctors office behind. It was a long walk up and down hills before he arrived at the general store with his money deep in his pockets.

"Mornin', stranger." Hosea assumes its the owner greeting him as he steps inside with a loud bell chiming above his head.

"Morning." he repeats.

He walks further into the store and takes a few things off the shelves, setting them on the counter to pay. He notices the bars of chocolate in the corner of his eye and turns his head quietly as the owner makes small talk with him.

He picks up the blue wrapper and reads it before grabbing a second one and purchasing those, too.

"Will that be all?" the owner asks.

"Do you know where I can buy clothes?"

"Theres a place down the road. Levi Strauss sells good jeans, theres a few tailors across the city."

Hosea nods and stuffs what he can in his coats pockets before sticking the jars under his arms. His walk back up the hills are quieter and slower, Hosea studying the buildings and people filling its streets. He avoids murky puddles and doesn't look into the shadows for too long. Sometimes they took human shapes, other times eyes would stare back until he looked away.

He knew they were hungry.

Small shadows followed him across the walls, little hands touched or grabbed his coat. Hosea waved them off before finding his less important provision to hold out.

The jar is grabbed and the shadows run back into the darkness of the alleyways as the wind picks up. The blond adjusts his hat and keeps walking up the incline, crossing the road at the crest and seeing the doctors door a few yards away.

With the shadows left behind, Hosea lets himself in. The chairs occupy an older couple who bicker as he enters and approaches the front desk.

"Were you with the woman from before?" he's asked. "The blond one with the boy?"

Hosea nods and he's directed into the doctors office. Arthur sits and gingerly touches the stitches on his chin as Bessie arranges payment with the doctor.

"This must be your husband." He looks to the doctor as Bessie nods. "Your wife was just telling me about what happened to your nephew on Pacheco Pass. Horrible business, how her sister and brother-in-law got killed, but the boy is blessed to have you in his life."

_Blessed to be with us. _

"Its... almost unbelievable." Hosea answers.

The doctor nods solemnly and looks at the boy still poking at his stitches.

"Bandits can still run rampant in these parts. I've informed your wife that, on behalf of your time of mourning, you won't have to pay full price."

Hosea nods and gives thanks before the couple pay and exit with the boy. Bessie has taken a few jars off of Hosea to carry herself while he slips his hand into his coat and rummages around.

"How bad was it, really?" Bessie asks Arthur.

"Gettin' stitches?" she nods. "Not as bad as I thought it would've been."

The older man walks in silence beside them before pulling the bar of chocolate from his jacket. He hands it over and Arthur takes it carefully.

"For trustin' us to help you." Hosea says quietly. He watches as the boy is momentarily distracted from his new stitches. While quietly entranced by the chocolate, Arthur pretends to pay no mind to the older couples conversation.

They discuss the doctors office and the tale Bessie had spun about her fake sister dying with her pretend husband on Pacheco Pass. This story left them with their nephew, Arthur, and a future of responsibility for the boy. He brings up getting the boy clothes and boots that would fit and be his own.

"How's that sound, Arthur?" Bessie asks him as she slips her arm through Hosea's. The boy looks up from his chocolate bar, having already smeared some across his nose.

"Real fine, Miss Matthews." he responds.

Bessie points to the end of her nose and Arthur wipes his face with the back of his hand as she explains the difference in title between a married and unmarried woman.

Arthur only nods along as they walk and every thing feels so oddly and suddenly domestic to Hosea. It could almost be uncomfortable if he ignored the feeling of enjoyment he was getting as they continued through the city streets.

This was not home. They had no city to truly call their own, but in this moment he found himself oddly comfortable as they strolled the San Francisco streets with the boy Dutch had picked up off the street.

The boy was a shadow. A malnourished street urchin who ate the chocolate Hosea had subconsciously bought like it was the last thing he was ever going to eat, or touch, or taste. The chocolate was gone in seconds, and so was that comfortable feeling resting in Hosea's chest.

It lowers to his stomach and churns slowly as they find the hairdressers. They spin the same tale, together this time, and instead of getting the usual inquisitive looks, they receive kindness and graciousness because damn, doesn't Arthur look the part of a fucked up kid that had been left alone in the wilderness for a while?

The hairdresser keeps a calm conversation as he finds lice and cuts Arthur's hair close to his head. He grabs a bottle and pours it into the very short blond hair before rubbing it through. It sticks like pomade and Arthur makes a disgusted face, then winces and touches the stitching.

The smell of it wafts to the couple before Arthur has the time to walk to them. Hosea then notices how the boys ears stick out just a little too far from the sides of his head and he turns his away to hide his smile.

They pay, then pay for the clothes that Arthur picks out at the tailors. Hosea and Bessie settle on a good pair of boots for him and follow him back to the hotel afterwards. They get him there in half the time it had taken for them to get to the doctors, Arthur grinning as Hosea thanks him.

The boy rushes up to Dutch to show him his new things. The dark haired man makes a few comments as Hosea shoves the jars harshly into his chest and climbs into his grey horses saddle.

-

_Hosea Matthews Journal_

** _Winter, 1877_ **

We have recently acquired a boy from the slums of San Francisco.

I do not know what we are supposed to do with him, or what Dutch's definition of "helping" is.

Now that we have set up camp and are planning on going to Oregon, we have also found the boy is, for the most part, illiterate. Bessie has also been told in confidence that the boys mother died while he was very young. Susan and I were already aware of Morgan senior's demise at the hands of the law, but will not be discussing it until Dutch brings the subject up.

Apparently, we are going to fulfill the boys prophesied future as a criminal. Dutch still believes, in his naive way, that we will be doing the boy a world of justice. I do suppose riding with us is better than dying in those trashed streets, but the boy is also unable to ride a horse or shoot a gun. Every thing he needs to know, we will teach.

I am worried about his future morality already, though Bessie has been trying to convince me not is all as bad as I have conjured up in my head.

Now we go to Oregon in hopes of running into the O'Driscoll brothers, Eoin and Colm. Eoin is as dumb as a rock, but Colm seems to have less of a brain on him. He may only act like that in the vicinity of his older brothers in hopes of stroking his ego, but I do not care.

I can only hope that our next visit goes over smoother. Last time, the brothers got drunk and threatened to kill us because we couldn't remember if Colm was turning twenty-six or twenty-five.

Neither he nor his brother can count to ten, so I'm not sure why it mattered.

Anyway.

The promise of Oregon awaits us all, even young Arthur.

He can be such a smartass.

**\--**

The road to Oregon was longer than previously thought.

Bounty hunters were out for a dark haired man and his blond accomplice, and their search party didn't stop at San José. It followed them to Sacramento after following word of a group of outlaws that had been seen stealing in San Francisco. Hosea was more disappointed that his scam at the fancy dinner he'd snuck he and Bessie into hadn't lasted as long as he'd wanted, but he had other things to attend to now.

It had been a few weeks of slow learning for Arthur and Hosea both. The boy knew some of his letters, but the rest had to be taught and the only acceptable teacher in his eye was Bessie. Hosea had to learn a different kind of patience than he was used to; the patience of dealing with an adolescent. A wild one, at that.

But beyond the minor irritations Arthur could produce, Hosea found his worries had shifted some since San Francisco. Prior to watching Bessie and Arthur sit around the fire together, smiling, joking, happy- he only bothered to think about the negative.

Of course his worries still stayed.  
What were they to do with a boy? Would he learn anything useful from them? Most of all, Hosea was concerned that this boys lifespan would be cut in half if he stayed with them.

Dutch could preach all he wanted about how much better it was than the streets, but he held firm to his doubts, even as that sliver of empathy began to try and scratch at him to tear itself into something larger.

Dutch has his eye on the boy any time Hosea looks up. He's watching, always, as if missing something was out of the question. Arthur wasn't dumb; he knew that Dutch was studying him, figuring him out. Still, the boy couldn't keep himself from emerging at times from that orphaned and beaten shell.

Hosea and Bessie had the opportunity to see the intelligence in him while Dutch had already latched onto the boys violent side rooted in his want to survive.

"_I had to stop him from killing a man one of the first times I saw him in the city._" Hosea remembered Dutch telling him some time after arriving at Sacramento's outskirts. "_Chilling what the world can do to someone so young_."

He didn't need to be reminded.

"_The boy's got fire_!"

He also has the capacity to think, but Hosea hadn't brought it up.

They were in Yuba City for the time being, the place that had been distribution central for the gold mining 49ers when the California rush happened.

Hosea had been young when it happened; Dutch hadn't even been born yet, but he heard stories and had met children of miners who waited for the inheritance. Now it seemed empty compared to the stories he had been told, Hosea stopping momentarily for supplies.

A stagecoach turns the corner of the main road and runs down, guarded by a couple armed riders and followed later by three more. Hosea stops tying the goods to the back of Silver Dollar and watches over the leather saddle as it turns and enters a space between two buildings, the blond running his eyes over the buildings exterior.

It was just a hotel, but a hotel housing an important guest.

He watches two of the guards meander from behind the building and enter the front, the rest still at the back. Hosea loosens the bag of supplies and catches a few things before closing it. He ruffles his shirt and sets his hat on the saddle before mussing his hair and crossing the road.

He glances between the buildings and sees the back wheels of the stage before shoving the hotel doors open abruptly and stumbling inside.

Hosea lands against one of the guards who grabs him by the collar and shoves him back.

"What the hell are you doin', boy?!"

He catches himself and feels a gun barrel press into his spine, feigning fear.

"Aye? Oh, I'm just here ta deliver some goods." he says and takes a large step to the hotel manager. "Are ye the owner?"

"Get out!" the guard shouts.

Someone grabs him by the sleeves and tries steering him away.

"I'm jus' tryin' ta do me job!" Hosea slides from his grip and ducks to avoid being grabbed again before he turns back to the owner. "Ye look like ya own the place."

Hosea looks over his shoulder and pulls his head aside to avoid a fist, launching himself over the front desk to put the owner between himself and the guards.

A few of the others have emerged from the hallway and are shouting at the owner who tries calming them down.

"We've got an important guest," one with the busy beard says. "And you promised no one else would be in the hotel!"

"I wasn't expecting any deliveries!" the mans voice raises as Hosea tugs him back to keep away from the reaching guards.

"Ye gotta protect me, mate." he says. "These bastards won't listen."

"Stop this!" Hosea turns his head and finds the coach guest has decided to step in. "Leave them both alone."

The guards step back hesitantly and Hosea lets go of the hotel owner. He leans against the front table and waves, setting his hand on his hip after.

"G'mornin-"

"Shut up." the manager says quietly.

Hosea glares at him as the expensive looking man approaches and picks up the box the blond had brought in. He goes through it, picking up pencils and looking to the manager.

"What's the issue?"

The owner points to Hosea. "This one thinks I ordered all this, but none of it is mine."

"See, I had clear instructions ta deliver this here box ta _Yuba City_-"

"Sir!" the man from the coach stops him. "Whats your name?"

"Hamish Blár." Hosea offers his hand, the other shaking it.

"Leonard Brass. I'm sorry you had to make a delivery only to be met with this."

Hosea nods. "Aye. Me too. Not sure wha' I'm gonna do with all this now." he gestures to it and Brass picks a few more things from the box.

"How about..." he grabs a jar and looks over the contents before holding them up. "I buy these off you, and you keep the rest."

He lifts his eyebrows and smiles, nodding. "Sounds like a deal ta me."

Brass smiles in return and hands his new things to the guards, fetching his money and paying Hosea a great deal too much for such mediocre items.

"This is real kind of ya-" Hosea says and shakes his hand again. He reaches for the box and lifts it. "-real kind."

"It would have been a shame for you to go through all that trouble only to not be paid."

Brass walks him to the door.

"I know. I woulda been downright angry had I not gotten nothin'. Thank ye again."

"I am always glad to help."

Hosea steps outside and lets the money slip from his pocket. Theres a few moments of stiffness in his neck before Brass runs out and slips it into his coat for him, bidding him farewell.

The blond carries the box to the end of the street where he sets it down and sighs, releasing a breath as he adjusts his shirt and hair.

Silver Dollar finds his way to him at the sound of his whistle and nudges him with his nose.

"You saw the theatrics, huh?" he asks and ties the supplies back on the horse. Silver Dollar huffs and Hosea takes it as a yes, shaking his head and revealing the cash. He'd gotten twenty dollars from things worth five altogether.

Hosea chuckles and slips the money back into his coat before climbing into the saddle to ride back to camp.


	2. Chapter Two

"That's my daughter, Elizabeth."

Love could make the world stop.

Hosea found this out when Bessie's father introduced them the first time in Delaware when they were in their early twenties.

Love was exquisite, he found as their eyes met and everything else slowly melted away. There was mistrust in her gaze, but still enough attraction that he sensed she might just let him in enough to know her.

Over time he found she disliked the name Elizabeth.

"I've always preferred Bessie." it was one of the few conversations they found themselves having when her parents weren't intercepting.

They wanted to keep her safe from the scruffy younger man. Hosea knew from the fire in her eyes and the hook in her tongue she could protect herself.

"Am I allowed to call you that?"

She had grinned partially while her eyes looked him up and down. Then, they settled on his face and stayed there for several moments before she nodded.

"I wouldn't trust anyone else with using it as graciously as you."

_Bessie_.

The scent of magnolia flowers always lingered where she had been as if she had graced the world with her existence.

Time kept stopping. The magnolia flowers found their way to him, and Hosea found himself staying longer in Delaware than he had originally planned.

She liked music.

She showed him her family's grand piano and played it beautifully in the sitting room one evening, just for them. She took him to venues where bands would play and singers would share their gift with the audience. Her father attended vast parties which she snuck them into just to listen to the violins and cellos.

She could also dance.

Dancing was one of the things she taught him in the dark rooms of her fathers expensive home. In the midst of Delaware and its higher class parties, she would be shunned for the night because of her behavior. He, Hosea, would climb through her window and find her sitting by a candle.

They would have to remove their shoes to keep from making too much noise on the hardwood floors. Their socks would slide and shift across the oak, her hand intertwining with his before she placed his hand on her hip and began to lead the dance.

He'd never knew he could blush until she joked about it during their whispered talks, a smile on her face as the candlelight guided them in their small room. Hosea had surprised her with a twirl and she'd fallen back into his chest with rosy cheeks.

"You blush, too." he'd whispered.

The candlelight did nothing to hide the deepening red of her face as she tapped his chin.

"If I blushed as much as you, I'd be as red as a rose."

His mouth had quirked and he guided them across the floor, arms fully enveloping each other as the music rose softly from the lower floor. She stared up at him with as much softness in her gaze as Hosea felt in his heart.

He understood then, holding Bessie and breaking her family's rules, what love felt like.

\--

Occasionally, he heard drumming. It came from the back of his head most nights and only thumped against the front of his skull during quiet moments in the day.

Most times it was a memory of his mother doing something to keep herself sane in their small cabin. A habit of setting up the same cooking spit while his father had fucked off to God knows where in search of another woman to hurt.

Other times it was the memory of the drummer boy following them into battle, then the cannons had followed.

But recently it was Arthur. Restless Arthur kicking in his sleeping roll beside the crackling fire. Hosea used to have nightmares like him every night; in his older age they wound down to every once in a while, leaving him startled and unable to get shut eye. Once or twice Arthur had woken himself. A couple others had everyone else reaching for their guns in alarm.

Tonight it seemed calmer, at least for Hosea. The older man was on the last watch shift and had noticed the boys foot spasming in the corner of his eye. Now, it kicked, but Arthur wasn't yet making any kind of noises. He never stepped in to wake him unless he had cause for alarm.

Still, the kicking was worrying. Arthur would no doubt wake himself in a short while, probably saying something that Dutch deemed incoherent in his exhaustion. Hosea recognized the habits of a language long pushed into the back of the boys mind that even he sometimes didn't recognize as he apologized to the rest of the gang and turned over to sleep.

Hosea told him he understood the morning after the first night his nightmares woke them. He failed to elaborate, but Arthur had relaxed some beside him. Bessie always volunteered to scoot closer, or at least reached out to him and gave a soothing touch to his arm. Susan could tease, but usually she made a joking comment and bid him good night before turning back over to sleep. Dutch sympathized, then complained as if Arthur hadn't already taken his shift of watch during the later nights just so Van Der Linde could get a few more hours sleep.

But Hosea gave in, as he found himself doing more often than not, only because Dutch was the founding leader and kept them on the track to freedom. The blond could get as irritated as he wanted, but Dutch could start talking and hit every raw nerve in him to turn him around on their right track.

_Their_ freedom. Their own justice, liberty, and set of rules. The East didn't hold them anymore and the West had no grasp. It was truly paradise in the form of the American frontier, and Hosea was loving every minute of it.

Except for that drumming.

The awful drumming.

Arthur was fully shaking in his sleep now, face twisted in fear. Hosea pushes himself up from the ground and finds himself hurrying to the boys side, kneeling and touching him gently.

The teen startles awake and his first instinct is to try and grab the older man by the throat. Hosea moves aside but feels a nail scrape his ear, falling on his thigh and holding up his hand in a motion of _calm down_.

The boy cowers momentarily while his shoulders heave. It takes several seconds before his green eyed gaze softens and he pushes his palms into his eyes to rub them.

"I'm sorry." he murmurs.

Hosea shifts to sit on his rear and shakes his head, whispering in return. "You didn't know who I was."

Arthur lifts his head and crosses his arms over his knees. The older man watches him glance at the sleeping forms of the others, eyes lingering on Dutch.

"Are you..." Hosea clears his throat quietly. "...alright?"

The boy nods, his fingers coming up to quickly run through his hair. "I can take over watch for you."

Hosea only shakes his head again as he stands, the rifle in his grip.

"No, you need your sleep." Arthur gives him a flat look and he understands every emotion flickering through those tired green eyes. "At least try to get a few hours shut-eye. It ain't fun sitting in the dark with an old man like me."

Arthur rolls his eyes and stands as Hosea begins walking back to his place. He'd settled for the hollow tree to rest against for his shift, the tree long dead but still standing as an old skeleton of itself. His brown eyes study the thin and bare branches above his head as the boy wanders over with a yawn, Hosea thinking they looked like bony fingers reaching for the purple sky.

Arthur drops himself on the other side of the tree with a tired huff. So he was going to do watch anyway. That, or keep Hosea company until he inevitably fell back asleep against the dry bark of the dead tree.

Hosea looks to the quiet fire to first check on his wife. She seems happy enough where she is, if not slightly uncomfortable in her lone bedroll on the dirt. Susan and Dutch are across from her, Van Der Linde sleeping with his whole body wrapped around a happy looking Grimshaw who pushes back into him and causes him to grumble.

In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to hold Bessie and he feels a slight rage rise in him before the sound of Arthur snoring gently pushes it away.

\--

The boy had woken himself several more times before the sun broke over the horizon in time for them to leave for La Grande.

Arthur yawned on the back of Susan's horse as she lead the animal behind Dutch. The boy had gotten better at riding, mainly using Silver Dollar as practice or Bessie's own blue roan, Gloria. The Count hated being touched by anyone other than Dutch and Susan's horse was far too inexperienced for anyone other than a proper rider to guide him.

Hosea's mind wandered from Arthur's voice trying to read the pages Bessie had written for him to his own early teen years. Those years had been the second time he saw his father since he was six, _maybe_ seven.

It was a few years before Lincoln made headlines in the papers, before his mother had enough and finished herself off instead of glaring into God's eye and waiting.

Fourteen years old. Angry as he came back from town with a blackening eye the barkeep's sons had given him only to find her drunk again on the ground.

Love was not something he knew often as a child, nor most times as an adult. He only thought the world was cold, dark, unforgiving and mean before Black Raven took one of his own blankets and draped it around his bony shoulders in the snow.

But Black Raven and his family happened _after_ 1865, and the only care he knew before then was the quick wrapping of wounds and the sharing of alcohol around a smoldering campfire.

Hosea was one of the literate men in the group at the time. He often had to read familial letters to those sick and dying in infirmary beds. He'd written out a few letters on behalf of others as well, and at twenty, during April of'65, he saw his father for the third and final time.

Arthur's slow reading stops and Hosea finds himself applauding along with Bessie without realizing it. He hadn't been with the gang for too much time, but Arthur had come a long way from being unable to recognize his own name to being able to sound out sentences.

La Grande is a several days ride through uneven California mountains and Hosea has to ask settlers and miners for directions along the way. They slip in behind a wagon train for some of the way until Bessie guides them out and leads them some of the way over the Oregon border.

There wasn't anything special about La Grande except for that stagecoach running in and out of it regularly with payloads for the workers in town. Hosea caught wind of it their first day there while Dutch was busy with Susan.

Arthur was practicing his shooting when Dutch arrived back with a young horse during their first week. He and Hosea both had stolen her from the stables after the boy kept eyeing her. She was a muddled grey animal with a few black spotches covering her body. Arthur had jogged up to her with shining eyes and gently laid his hand on her head before she pushed at him. He lifted a grinning face to them.

"Her names Boadicea." Dutch said. Hosea had turned and glared as Arthurs face fell at the obvious lost chance to name her himself.

"She's real pretty." the boy answered.

Hosea had run his hand down the side of her neck as he stepped closer to the teenager, his fingers barely brushing her white mane.

"Come on, then." Hosea told him. "Climb on."

"But I don't know if she likes me or not-"

"Every horse likes you-" he had seen how Silver Dollar and Gloria had loved him dearly the moment he met them"-except for The Count, but he's a mean bastard anyways."

Arthur laughs gently, the first laugh Hosea had mustered from him in the last few months. He looks up at the blond as if searching for permission before the older man nods and steps back. The boy glances to Dutch before he climbs into the saddle and runs his hands down the sides of Boadicea's neck.

She lifts her head and whips her tail as Arthur takes the reigns and relaxes in the saddle. She's a few hundred pounds of obedient love that trots away from the two older men at Arthur's orders.

He loves her, cares for her and kept her safe his first week with her and the horse did exactly the same once they decided on finally robbing that stagecoach.

Bessie stood at the edge of the road in a ripped up old dress with her eyes on Hosea's as they waited for the stagecoach. She was to play the role of a damsel in the woods trying to find her spooked horse.

She holds his gaze as they hear the stage round the corner, hooves beating like a drum against the earth. He can hear reigns whip against huffing horses backs before she composes herself and jumps out, crying.

The driver pulls the horses to a stop and Hosea lowers himself to the ground. His eyes skim over the bits of wagon he could see through the leaves and watches as the guards emerge and round the horses to help her. His gaze falls over his wife as she wipes fake tears and complains about a scuff she had suffered during her frightful time in the woods. Three out of the four holster their guns as they check her dirtied hands and try to guide her back to the coach, Bessie taking several steps towards the horses before she sets the robbery in motion.

Her hand steals one of the guards guns as she wraps her arm around his throat and drags him back. The rest turn their barrels to her as she pushes the gun into the side of his throat and glares over his head.

Hosea steps out of the brush as Susan emerges from the other side, both of their guns raised towards the guards.

"There ain't no money." the guard Bessie is holding chokes out. "Now let us go."

Dutch clicks his tongue as Hosea notices Arthur in the corner of his vision emerging from the shadows to the back of the coach where the supposed cash was. The driver watches them with his hands raised, but his eyes keep falling to his boots.

Hosea turns his glare back to the two guards ahead of him as Susan shifts the weight of her shotgun to the other hand and turns her head to him. He meets her stare and she motions her head to the driver who is staring back at his feet again.

"-you shoot first, we kill all of you." Dutch threatens. "Lower your guns."

Arthur is peeking from his crouched position behind the stagecoach with his hands tightening the knot of his bandana behind his head.

The guards glance at each other before Bessie cocks her pistol and presses it into the side of her hostage's head.

"I have no issue adding brains to this dress." Bessie says. The guards share an alarmed look with each other, Arthur lifting his borrowed pistol from his belt as he creeps past the stage wheels. "Put the guns down."

The men share another look in silence before the driver dives to reach for something by his feet. Time slows as the man lifts a rifle with a wild look on his face and Hosea matches his speed. He manages to cock it and aim before the blond raises his gun and pulls the trigger. It hits his intended target, the hands gripping the barrel, and the rifle flies into the treeline.

The other guards lift their guns to shoot but Susan's shotgun blows one man a few feet back and Dutch shoots another in the thigh. Arthur has hopped into the stagecoach in hopes of finding some more cash, falling back out with someone on top of him.

Hosea lifts his gun and is about to shoot but it fires early and lodges a bullet into the mans throat. He stares at the end of his gun but finds he hasn't pulled the trigger.

With a shocked look on his face, the guard chokes on his blood and lets go of Arthur only to fall dead on his side.

The end of the boys pistol smokes as he lifts his hand carefully to the blood drips now coating his face. The horses whinny with the driver crying out in pain as Hosea approaches him and helps him stand.

It takes Arthur several seconds to find his footing before pushing away from the older man with his pistol at his side. Both of them turn at a shout and Hosea throws Arthur back into the stagecoach as riders break over the crest of the hill. Gunshots echo from the other side of the coach and he can momentarily see Bessie with her eyes trained down the sights, a bandana now pulled over her mouth. Arthur's head peeks up and looks around worryingly before a shadow covers the sunlight and moves across the top of the wagon. Hosea climbs up using the doors and tackles the driver on the roof while bullets fly past them. Dutch is shouting incoherently as the blond knocks the man out withe the butt of his gun and turns his attention to the riders attempting to hide in the woods.

"Where's the boy?" Dutch shouts somewhere to Hosea's left. A bullet snatches his hat off and forces Hosea to push himself further into the roof of the stage.

"I'm here!" Arthur responds inside the coach.

The wagon begins rocking and Hosea turns only to realize the horses have been spooked and are tempted to run. He rolls and falls off the side, stumbling to a knee as he lifts the gun and aims. His vision goes fuzzy and focuses as everything slows once more. Men run slowly from the tree line and bullets hit them in the chest and skulls. Their bodies fall to the dirt and others emerge only to be shot down with wretched expressions twisted in grief and pain.

Deadly silence follows afterwards. The silence that leaves a person waiting for more, leaves them still with their senses heightened and eyes blown wide.

Thats exactly what happened to Arthur. Hosea ignores the sting on his back to check the boy inside the stagecoach. He holds a tight grip on his bicep, brows furrowed while Hosea pulls the door open and notices blood seeping from between his fingers.

"It hurts." Arthur hisses in pain as Hosea pulls his hand off the wound to see. Its a graze of a gunshot, no worries on Hosea's end as long as he could douse it with something.

Susan helps the boy out of the stage as the rest whistle for their horses. Hosea climbs to the roof to check the driver before stealing his cash and rings. He spots Bessie already cleaning Arthur's wound with alcohol and notices the blood he had trailed across the dirt. His hand comes up to his side and feels around before finding a hole ripped into his shirt. Blood was slowly spreading across the light blue cloth as Hosea climbed back down with his new possessions and came to Silver Dollars side.

"Everybody alright?" Dutch asks.

"Arthur got hit." Susan answers. "I think Hosea did too."

The younger man turns to him, himself untouched by the bullets. Dutch gestures to him.

"You alright?"

Hosea only shrugs. "I'll live."

He receives a nod as Boadicea trots past and checks on her owner.

\--

Susan throws more wood onto the fire, crickets chirping around them as Dutch both praises and picks at Arthurs handling of the heist.

Hosea sits on the ground with Bessies knees either side of his shoulders, his shirt resting in his lap as she sews his wound back up. His eyes watch the boy picking at the cooked game in his hands. He rips the meat apart and sticks some in his mouth, nodding gently as Dutch tells him something.

Hosea's jaw clenches as pain erupts from his fresh wound. He brushes Bessie off and looks over his shoulder at her, the two holding each others gaze for a long while until he speaks.

"Are you angry with me?"

Bessie thinks on the question for a moment until she answers.

"No." She reaches again but Hosea leans away, his eyes still on hers. Bessie lets out a quick breath and lays her hand over his shoulder. "All that time studying the stagecoach's schedule, and not once did extra riders come up?"

Hosea shuts his eyes and sighs, shaking his head as he lets her pull him back against her. "There hadn't been any extra guard the last few weeks."

"You think they might have just been some unlucky folk?"

Hosea's hand finds her lower leg beneath her skirt. "Maybe. They could have heard the gunfire and wanted to know what was happening. It doesn't matter now, we-" he sighs again, his head falling back against her stomach. "-_I _killed them."

"It was a group effort." her fingers find his hair and rub against his scalp. "You saw Susan and I pulling those triggers. Even Arthur killed a couple of them. You aren't the only one responsible."

Guilt always sat heavy in his heart, though only occasionally did it find its way to his conscious thoughts. Growing up as a child with a mother that only sometimes tried to show her love and the rest of the time didn't even try to hide her hatred for him, guilt was his first emotion. Guilt, then fear. When he was seven, his father visited smelling of alcohol and caked in pig shit after a job went wrong and the few men he called friends died or got arrested. Hosea stared up at him in shock as he recognized himself somewhat in his face before his father dragged his mother inside and locked the door. He stayed for two weeks and for every day of those two weeks Hosea thought he should have done something to protect the mother that didn't even love him.

Guilt hung heavy. Guilt knew him, guilt loved him, and guilt twisted and molded him into a dark eyed image of his father.

Bessie's warm hands massage the tight muscles in his neck and it causes his eyes to flutter close. The ends of his fingers glide up the side of her leg to the back of her knee, sliding to her thigh and the edge of her undergarments. Thats where she leans forth and kisses his ear before her hands slide across his collarbones and down to the long etching in his skin where a piece of metal shrapnel lodged in his chest when he was young.

He finds himself sliding his thumb under the band of her undergarments for a moment until the fire cracks loudly.

Bessie lays her cheek against the side of his head and Hosea lets his hand fall from her thigh to her ankle, fingers wrapping there instead.

\--

_Hosea Matthews Journal_

**Spring, 1877**

Arthur is deadly.

I have come to find he is as good with a gun as he is horses. I can only imagine what he has been forced to do to survive alone in a city like San Francisco at such a young age. He can handle any type of gun well, though the shotgun blew him off his feet. The kid is no taller than five feet, if that, but he at least has a few more years to grow.

For his sake, I hope he does.

We've landed in La Grande, Oregon and Arthur handled himself well for his first stagecoach robbery. He was the one to collect the cash while the rest of us kept the guards distracted. I was wishing we would not have to kill, but as Dutch says, it was a _kill those as need killing _moment and I won't argue with that.

Among shooting a gun, Arthur has come well along with his reading and writing. He still sounds his words out at times and struggles with one too many syllables, but he is getting along well with it. Writing is also improving slowly and I am glad to see him able to write and recognize his name.

Lately, Arthur has seen Dutch and I drawing or sketching, and occasionally I have caught him attempting to catch my likeness to the corners of his writing pages.

Apparently, I frown often.

I do hope he knows it is not directed at him.

Since picking up the boy I have discovered my thoughts wander at the most innapropriate of times. Our pasts are not the same, but the kid and I have our similarities. Though he is not a spitting image of myself at his age, it would be difficult to not see fourteen year old me within that angry teenager.

My mother had not died yet, but she wasn't ever _truly _a mother. My daddy was a jackass, but seeing him three times in your life wasn't much. Ma at least made the effort of keeping me alive, for that I am grateful.

Susan and I still have not brought up Lyle, Arthur's father. We knew of his execution through the criminal grapevine and Bessie saw the portrait in Arthur's things. A picture of his mother, Beatrice, had also been hiding within the black hat the boy brought with him.

He must have had some fondness for his daddy, given its the same hat in the dead mans mugshot.

Arthur is watching me now, even, thinking I can't see him in the dark. He is usually watching, staring. He studies me to understand my habits and understand who exactly he is dealing with. I'm not Dutch, not the man who saved him from living on the street or took him in, but I am the kind woman's husband and the one who tends to vanish for a day or so for hunting.

I would like to teach him how to hunt, maybe fish if he has the patience for either. If he is going to continue an outlaw lifestyle, a life away from the big cities and civilization, he should know how to catch, gut, and cook his own food.

I have, unfortunately, found myself growing more responsible for this boy.

God damn it.

I am not the man to be helping a child! I'm a conman, a thief... Even having Bessie in my life seems like some lie God has bestowed upon me. This boy is-

No. The boy isn't a burden. He and I have been put in an unfair situation where his most trusted adult is Dutch of all people and I, parentless Hosea Matthews, am left with a boy to help.

Bessie and I take time to ourselves to talk as a couple away from the others. I have explained to her my frustrations and she sat on this information for a few hours until she could give me the most helpful advice possible. She explained to me that I need to change some parts of myself if I truly wanted to help the boy.

"Maybe, if you're lucky, he'll bring out more good in you like I did."

This is what she said to me last night when we were alone. I understand what she means, but, sometimes I _do_ wish I believed in some type of God. She Pushes Mountains and Black Raven, they trusted their Creator and the people long gone to help them.

What do I have?

Dutch?

He may occasionally think he's God, or some type of preacher, but whatever religion he's preaching, I can't hear it.

I never thought it would last this long, the relationship Dutch and I have. I met him on the road to Chicago after slipping back into my old ways, but did so just to make a buck. I was so tired of the work Bessie's father offered and I couldn't stand the office space or the city anymore.

She understood when I said I needed to do something _else _to support us. Her work wasn't paying enough and she trusted in my skills.

Dutch doesn't know, but we were only supposed to follow him far enough West before putting some distance between us and him. Somewhere along the road I started to fall for what he was preaching and only Bessie could pull me back out.

San Francisco was going to be the last place we ever saw Dutch.

Maybe he knew. Maybe thats why he brought that boy back to the hotel and asked Bessie to treat his wounds. Oddly, it wouldn't surprise me if he had. But he does seem quite convicted in keeping this boy safe and healthy for the most part. I am beginning to trust in his ideas and plans and am uncomfortably starting to slip back into listening to his preaching.

Now we must see Eoin and that idiot brother of his, Colm.

We'll have to solve another way out in the future, Bessie and I. The tides will change and we will be able to live without Van Der Linde constantly at our side.


	3. Chapter Three

Summer of 1865 was the third and final time Hosea Matthews ever saw his father. He was twenty at the time, tired, worn down, practically alone for the last four years of his life after burying his mother beside the cabin in the New York mountains. He'd skipped down a state or two and enlisted, serving until the end of the war in April.

The time afterwards was a period of uneasy quiet where he took the long road through New England following the rumor of a ghost he beared resemblance to. He found the ghost in New Jersey on the top floor of a rundown building that smelled as much like shit as he had done when Hosea was a boy.

He nudged the door open with his toe and peered inside, finding the man face down on the floor with his gun inches from the ends of his fingers. Hosea had entered warily, broken glass crunching beneath his boots while the ghost on the floor grumbled about the noise.

The ghost outstretched a hand and grabbed for the pistol, turning it on Hosea with a startled gasp. It was simple to pry it from his hands and throw it into the corner of the room. His father had narrowed his eyes before pushing himself to sit up and stare. Hosea thought he may have shown gratefulness at his son being alive, but that was a short lived moment as the ghost coughed and pushed himself to sit up. The man was grinning as Hosea ran his eyes around the room, the rundown state only reminding him further of the cabin he was raised in.

"I buried her." He had told the room.

The ghost heard it while prying pieces of glass from his palm and Hosea only looked down once the twinkling of glass on glass stopped.

"Did you kill her too?"

He stared at the similar curve in the mans nose and gave a slight shake of his head. The ghost pulled one last small shard from the end of his finger and flicked it at the young man in front of him. Hosea paid it no mind as it bounced off his belt and hit the dusty carpet afterwards, eyes still holding the numbed gaze of the ghost.

"You might as well have," Hosea narrowed his eyes some at the others words. "I know you never showed an ounce of appreciation towards her. You never did to me."

The young man at the time had let out a hoarse laugh and watched as the ghost used the edge of the rickety table to help him stand.

"You weren't ever there." Its an easy task of stepping out of an old mans swing. Hosea only watched as the man lost his footing and fell, snapping the table beneath his weight. 

His father laughed and rolled onto his side to glare up at him. "This is what you're related to, boy! All this and more."

Hosea had begun kicking, kicking and stomping as the ghost egged him on like a bad reminder of what he was and was destined to grow into. He had stopped only after every frustration built up since childhood had been expelled through the toe of his boot and into the ghosts now broken ribs. The ghost had wheezed his laughter and lowered his head against the glass as Hosea panted above him.

The young man, his frustrations quelled for now, had sat beside the ghost on the glass ridden floor and stared at the palms of his hands, shoulders slumped as the ghost let out wheezy breaths beside him.

\--

"Focus... no, aim and breathe. You're getting too tense." Arthur lets out an irritated, gruff breath as Hosea slides closer and wraps his hand around the underside of the rifle. "Keep your eye down the sights, and keep the sight on the deer."

"I am!" Arthur snaps.

Hosea turns his head to him and lets go of the gun. "Alright... remember what I said."

The boy shifts and turns his gaze back down the sight of the gun. The older man watches his jaw tighten before his finger wavers over the trigger, his index tightening but never quite pulling it. Hosea waits, and keeps waiting until the boy sighs and lowers his head, shoving the rifle back to its owner.

He rolls on his side and takes the gun from the boy, glancing at the deer still grazing until he whispers to him.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

Arthur shakes his head and raises hard eyes to the deer ahead of them as he tries sliding himself back from their hiding spot. Hosea lays his hand over the boys shoulder blade and the gentle action stops the teen where he is, forcing his gaze to turn to the blond. Hosea only raises his eyebrows in question and the boy lowers himself against the grass again with another long breath.

"I know we need it to eat but... it didn't do nothin' to us." Arthur whispers in return.

So the boy was too kind to kill an animal, but had shot several men these last few months without a second thought.

Hosea checks the chamber of the gun as the teenager continues.

"I know this sound stupid but I-I don't wanna kill it." his voice wavers and it forces the older man to lift his eyes. Arthur stares back with a sadness and shame in his green eyes. "I'm sorry, Mister Matthews."

Hosea shakes his head and closes the gun, listening to it click as he lays it across his arm and watches the buck raise its head at the sight of a doe strolling past.

"You've got nothing to apologize for, just a kind heart you've kept hidden for who knows how long. Its just empathy." _Just empathy._ "It makes you a better person than most of us."

Arthur shifts in the grass and stares ahead as the doe lowers its head and begins grazing as well.

"Dutch says to not let emotions get in the way."

"Dutch doesn't know what he's talking about." Arthur looks up in surprise. "He's got a point when you're talking about doing a job, but you've always got to trust your gut. If this feels wrong, its wrong. It feels good, its good. I won't judge if you don't want to shoot that deer. Hell, we can sit and watch them for all I care."

Hosea sets the rifle down as Arthur smiles softly, rolling on his stomach and resting his chin in his hands. They find themselves relaxing in the warming spring air as the deer eat in the peaceful quiet, both laying in silence as the birds chirp above them and the animals ahead go about their business. Hosea shifts and pulls the small journal from the inside of his coat, the pencil following. He tries his best to quietly lay the journal out and smooth down the pages, studying the buck before beginning a rough outline of the animal ahead of him.

Arthur watches as the older man continues drawing, soon sketching out a silhouette followe by smaller, simple details that made up the animal. He pushes it towards the teen who had already been eyeing it, the blond poking him with the dull end of the pencil before the boy takes it.

Arthur uses the next page to try and draw his own rendition of the deer, including the doe as well. Hosea's eyes flick between the animals on both the page and ahead of them, grinning when the teen creates a recognizable shadow of the animals.

The boy hands the pencil back and retracts into the shade of the leaves, eyes staring at the edge of the page. Its messy, made of harsh lines that cause the buck to have a hump in his back, but he's proud nonetheless.

Hosea turns his smile to the boy and Arthur carefully looks back, a light coming to his eyes once the older man whispers _this is great _and _well done! _

The older man signs his name under his drawing and Arthur quickly takes the pencil from him to sign his own name afterwards. The boy points and reads out _Arthur_, Hosea pointing to his own and chuckling before reading out _Hosea Matthews_.

They smile and laugh, both of them spooking the deer from the bushes.

\--

A letter arrives in late May, addressed to Bessie. She doesn't share its contents, nor seems to plan on doing so as the boys arrive back to camp with Arthur bleeding from the side of his head. Hosea watches her set it aside while Dutch follows the young teenager into the camp with a smug look on his face.

Smug, and proud.

Hosea had joined them in their little manhunt and watched as Arthur vanished into the treeline once they found Dutchs new friends. Only did he emerge when Dutch gave the order, going to work with a freshly sharpened knife in his grip and the _fire _Dutch had spoken about in his eyes.

Rage, undiluted rage that had been pent up and was being unleashed through the blade in his grip. Hosea had tried to step in but the younger man grabbed him, soothed him, pointing at Arthur and telling him to just enjoy the show.

The men were dead within minutes. Arthur had slit ones throat when he appeared almost out of nowhere, grabbing the other and wrestling him on the ground before killing him as well. He suffered the scrape to his scalp during the fight, had looked up at them with blood on his clothes while his body shook gently, and had been meant with praises from Dutch as Hosea stood in his simple silence.

The older man knew the teen must have done things to keep himself living, taught by his father or otherwise. Apart from the stagecoach robbery, he hadn't properly seen him in action. He'd even passed on a prized buck pelt because the teen _felt bad _about killing the animals.

Had they not sat only to watch and sketch the animals for almost an hour, or was that some kind of dream?

He acted different around Dutch. It wasn't by much, but there was a definite shift in his behavior that had been growing ever since leaving that San Francisco hotel. Deadlier, stronger, more focused and agile. Maybe they were only nurturing old skills, or maybe they really _were _bringing out the worst in Arthur.

All he knew now was the boy acted more his age around Bessie. He hadn't said it yet, but Arthur loved and trusted her. Hosea knew why; her kindness was unmatched. It was what drew him in. That, and her ability to keep up with him.

"_It isn't that __difficult_." she had said.

Yeah, sure. He knew how fast and cunning he could be, but she apparently knew it better.

She also knew Arthur's abilities in killing, but her tone hadn't changed from the one used in Dutchs hotel room when Arthur let her clean his wound. Now a dark pink scar on his chin, it would only remain as a memory of what happened to him, and who treated it afterwards. So would the one on his bicep, and countless scars healing across Hosea's torso.

Hosea had known that the letter arrived that morning through Susan, but Arthur hadn't found out until she was wiping the side of his head with clean water im hopes of seeing the wound better. His reading had gotten better, so of course his intuitive nature had his eyes skimming the name on the front of the envelope cast aside.

Hosea sees his brows furrow, then he looks up at the blond from across the way in confusion that Matthews didn't understand. 

"You can't have someone cleaning and treating your wounds forever, Arthur." Dutch says. He's lighting a cigar he'd grabbed from a seller in San José, deciding that Arthurs killing was cause for his own small celebration. "One day, you're gonna have to do it yourself, son."

"Well for now he can let me do it." Bessie argues. Arthur had stiffened, and remained stiff but a little more vigilant with her caring for him.

"Maybe you should teach Arthur-"

"I already have taught him to clean his own wounds, Dutch." she stands straight and gently releases Arthurs outgrown hair. The teen looks up with big eyes as she turns and looks at the dark haired man. "Let me do this much for him."

Hosea grins as he finds his dried fruit. His friend looks at him over his shoulder with a look in his eyes that screams for the blond to do something. He only walks past and rips the fruit in half, taking a bite out of one side as he approaches the boy.

Bessie clears off the box and kisses his cheek, turning away from them and leaving the two of them to talk. He holds the other half out and Arthur takes it with one of his still bloody hands.

"You should probably clean the rest of yourself up," he says and watches as Arthur sticks the dried fruit in his mouth and looks around for the bucket Bessie had been using.

Arthur cleans his hands off, submerging them and removing the blood. It comes off in swirls, floating gently through the already cloudy water as Arthur speaks around the fruit in his mouth.

"Thank you for the food." his manners had improved since he'd been with them. "And taking me out hunting the other day."

The older man nods and rests his hands in his lap. His eyes move either side of his body in search of the letter but quickly comes to find Bessie had been one step ahead of him on that one. She's reading it again across camp, her eyes skimming the page as her cheek hollows slightly.

She's lightly chewing the inside of her cheek, biting it in the mild level of anxiousness. Her canine comes to rest at the corner of her lip and Hosea notices the slight wrinkle between her brows. Bessie is worried, but not enough that it was yet cause for concern to Hosea.

''The letters from somewhere called Dell-a-ware." Arthur tells him quietly. He's begun eating the fruit now, Hosea looking back at him to find him studying the older man. "But I couldn't make sense of the name."

"Because its probably French."

"Huh?"

"French. Its a language and a people." Hosea realizes he's only confused Arthur more when the boy slows his chewing in an attempt to solve what the older man has said. "Like England? You know England?"

"Yeah, I know of it."

"Well, its people are English, and it's primary language is English. The French come from France. They speak-"

"French. Like the English speak English?"

Hosea nods. "I'd give a better explanation, but..."

Arthur shakes his head. "I get it now. So the people who sent her that letter must be French?"

"If they're who I'm thinking of, yes."

"And whose that?"

"Boulanger. Loïc Boulanger. Bessie's father."

\--

"Elizabeth Boulanger is such a bland name."

Its 1867 and Hosea is sprawled across her cushioned red chair, unnecessarily comfortable as she complains about her given name. Hosea just laughs, his arm thrown over his forehead and legs dangling over the arm of the couch.

"Compared to _Matthews_, its quite unique."

She only scoffs, turning in her seat. "Do you know how many Elizabeths were in my school? Its shocking how many families here truly think they're related to royalty."

"Thats because you went to a private, all girls school. Creativity starts running thin, even with all the cash."

He'd gotten her to laugh, but it stopped short and so did her writing. It became quiet and he soon got uncomfortable, Hosea sitting up slowly from the red cushions to gaze at her from his place.

"Thats why you're here, isn't it?" she asked. Her glare had turned to him and he felt cold dread wash over him. "For the cash?"

He had swallowed the dread away and unhooked his legs from the arm of the chair to respond.

"Its why I came. But you-you're why I stayed."

\--

It took a few days for her to believe him, but now Elizabeth Boulanger didn't exist. Only Bessie Matthews, con artist and loving wife. She could have been Arthur's mother by then, but no one said anything.

She was too pre-occupied by news of her own mother to pay much attention that evening. The letter, which she shared with Hosea before they turned over to sleep, disclosed information from her father stating her mother had recently fallen ill and frequently asked about her. Her wishes were, if she was to deteriorate further and pass away, to see her daughter once more even if it was only for a few minutes.

It would mean a long trip back East to her home state of Delaware in order to see her one last time. Hosea wouldn't be able to bear being gone from her for that long and she shared his feelings, especially so when he brought up how it may influence Arthur.

"Its been a few months," she tells him quietly. Arthur is busy listening to Dutch, his reverence on Evelyn Miller and their freedom in America. "It might not be too bad for him."

They'd known him since February, helped and travelled with him for those long few months as he learned to read and write, how to use a gun and focus that anger at the world down the sight of a gun.

Hosea leans into her, his arms draped over his knees. "He trusts _you _the most." Bessie sets her head on his shoulder and snuggles into him. He loosens his arm to allow her to hug it closer against her body, soon feeling her fingers sliding between his own.

"I don't think we can take him with us, Hosea. Not like Dutch did from San Francisco."

"Oh, I know. I wasn't suggesting that."

"I know what you were suggesting. That he'd be heartbroken if we left him behind."

"If _you _left. Not me."

"He trusts you too, Hosea. You're just too blind to look close enough when he's with you. Letting you take him alone to go hunting? I know you boys have those talks when you're alone... he'll miss you as much as he'd miss me."

He stares at the fingers wrapped with his own, watching quietly as Bessie lifts her other hand to lay over knuckles that had been bloodied too many times. Her hands are soft, though the back of her left one has a thin scar from her shenanigans as a child. Hosea found joy in kissing it directly when they'd first begun sharing their feelings with each other, then found she appreciated it more when he kissed between her most middle knuckles. She'd always push into his mouth and make him laugh, and his laugh always caused her smile to widen.

His gaze turns back to the boy seated beside Dutch, having been handed a gun to clean.

"-that's what they want to take from you." Dutch says. "Your freedom. Your life. Thats why we live like we do, in nature, _against _the very nature of things." 

Arthur nods quietly as he continues wiping at the pistol in his lap. When Dutch doesn't get an audible response, he lifts his eyes over the top of the book and nudges the boys shoulder with a rough poke. Arthur looks up suddenly and clears his throat.

"I'm listening."

The dark haired mans eyes raise. "What did I say?"

"That we're living against nature-"

Hosea lowers his eyes to the edge of the campfire as Susan stretches out in her bedroll and sighs beside them. He squeezes his wifes hand and feels Bessie squeeze in return.

"He'd be okay with Susan." the oldest man murmurs. "I guess he'd be okay with Dutch, too."

Bessie's head shifts on his shoulder and Hosea lets his cheek rest against her hair. A strand tickles the side of his nose and he purses his lips to blow it out of his way. She pokes him in the thigh in response while the preaching from across the fire continues.

He was exhausted from the day. Robbing, killing, the tension in his back and stomach from worrying about the teenager had taken it out of him.

He'd gotten him to go hunting again and the boy had shot something. The bullet killed the animal immediately, but Arthur and the soft spot in his heart still saddened when he had to skin it. He knew how to hunt things other than human now, knew somewhat how to track prints, taught both by Hosea and Susan's own knowledge when she'd been on her own for those months between leaving her family and falling for Dutch. He could write his name, read it, and was beginning to read higher level books. But it still felt wrong somehow, leaving Arthur all alone with Grimshaw and Van Der Linde in the West.

Even with the higher comfort of knowing he'd have Susan, it felt like a disservice to the boy to be stuck between. When they wanted to argue, they could really go for it, and Dutchs complaints compared to Wesley's, that fishing buddy he'd had for the gap between seeing his father the last time and finding Bessie.

Wesley got married a couple times, caused Hosea to laugh his ass off when he saluted his final wife crossing the bridge, but he seemed to hate every woman he'd promised his life to. Dutch wasn't the marrying type, not like Hosea nor Wesley were, and there was a vast difference between those two types of husbands. No, he needed to be on the move and even though Susan could keep up and sometimes move faster, his attention drifted.

They could have matches like thunder, and Arthur had already heard one of them during their pass from California to Oregon.

"We'll have to figure it out." Bessie pats the back of his hand like a gentle tug to the present.

He nods his head, stretching and freeing his arm only to wrap it around her and pull her closer. She smells like those magnolia flower that she'd adorned her room with in Delaware.

"Of course we will." he tells her. "We always do."

\--

"Do you know when your birthday is, Arthur?"

The boy has been sulking quietly ever since the Matthews couple revealed they would be needing to travel back East to see the Boulanger's in Delaware. Its been a week since then, a short time into June that has felt longer since they broke the news and received Dutch'a _blessing _to leave for a while.

Arthur looks up, but doesn't allow himself to get too excited.

"July sometime." he explains. "Why?"

Hosea shrugs and raises his binoculars back in front of his eyes. "Thought you might want to celebrate it."

Arthur only lets out a surprised laugh. "I haven't celebrated my birthday since I was little, Mister Matthews."

He peeks from around the binoculars at the boy. His rifle rests over his shoukder, the one Arthur had borrowed from the camp resting across his lap.

"You know you can just call me by my name." Hosea tells him. "Don't you?"

The teen looks away and shrugs, sticking the butt of the gun into the dirt. "I didn't wanna be disrespectful or nothin'."

"You'd have to do a lot more to disrespect me, Arthur." he continues watching the boy. "And it doesn't make a difference if you've celebrated your birthday or not. We'll do it now, if you tell me the day."

Arthur continues digging at the ground with the gun before murmuring. Hosea cups his hand behind his ear and leans down to the boys face to hear him. The teen cracks a grin and shoves him away lightly.

"July third. But you and Bessie are gonna be leavin' 'fore then."

"Leaving. If we time it right, we might be able to get back before you turn fifteen."

Arthur's eyebrows raise slightly in subtle excitement. "...really?"

Hosea shrugs. "Long as you let us actually go, yeah, we'll be back in time."

The boys shoulders drop almost immediately and he toes at the rocks in front of his boot. He kicks one lightly, sending it over the edge of the short cliff. Hosea lowers his binoculars and quietly steps closer to the teen, squeezing in beside him on the warm boulder he'd been resting on.

Arthur glances at him but quickly turns his attention back to the dirt while Hosea bounces the binoculars in his hands, finding his words.

"We don't really _want _to go all the way to Delaware. Bessie doesn't even like her family that much. Its bad timing with your birthday and all... and I'm sorry for that."

"Why are you gonna go see her mom if she doesn't really want to? I thought thats why you're both running with Dutch."

Hosea stares at rocky tooth of the cliff a few yards away before inhaling and crossing his ankles.

"Because... because Bessie doesn't want to regret her decision if her mother dies. She's the only one in the group who still has both her parents, both parents that _tried _to give her the best. She dislikes them, not because shes ungrateful, but because... well... thats for her to explain. But as I said, she doesn't want to live a life filled with regrets like the rest of us will. So, we're going to Delaware to either say hello or goodbye to mother Boulanger."

Arthur stares at the dirt between his boots with a quietly clenched jaw and furrowed brows. His hand grips the barrel of the gun in his silence and suddenly he's years older in Hosea's vision. Suddenly he's older and suddenly Hosea sees himself in the boy again, thinking of the day he very begrudgingly separated from Black Raven's and She Pushes Mountains' family.

They couldn't console him, only waved goodbye with their little boy between them and turned away.

Hosea slides his arm around the boys shoulders and feels him tiffen in his hold. There's a few seconds where he worries he made the wrong decision, but the rifle Arthur had been gripping falls to the dirt and the boy wraps his arms around him tightly.

Hosea's mouth falls open as Arthur pushes his face into shoulder and grips the back of his shirt, fingers twisting at the white fabric. The older man is suspended in a state of shock for several seconds before twisting and wrapping his other arm around the teen.

"You're coming back, right?" Arthur whispers. "You're really coming back?"

Hosea lets out a raggedy breath and nods, whispering in response. "_Yes_. Yes, we're both coming back for you, Arthur. The East- it... We'll be back before you know it." Arthur's grip loosens slightly, enough that he sits back a few inches and quickly wipes at his eyes and tries to play it off. Hosea rubs his back gently. "I might even be able to find some candies for you."

Arthur grins and breathes out a laugh, sniffling and staring Hosea in the eye.

"Please don't tell Dutch about this."

The blond rolls the words over in his his head before nodding gently. "He doesn't have to know."

\--

The East is as it had been when he and Bessie left it those years ago. They rode from higher North before cutting down through the states and into New Hanover where the carriage driver warned them of the Murfrees and the unrest between the Natives and the military.

"We haven't been this far East in... years." Bessie is stoking the fire as Hosea seasons the meat he'd cut from a duck. He turns it over and slathers the other side before sticking it on the rack above the flames.

"No, we haven't..." he's wiping his hands down with a cloth, crouched in front of the fire. His eyes roam over the trees above and the stars twinkling even higher in the sky. "Seems alright, for now."

"I heard a lady talking about how some man is trying to start a railroad track here. He wants to connect the adjacent states."

Hosea snorts and sets the rag aside, cool air settling over his damp hands.

"Men have done more foolish things." Bessie shifts and sits beside him as he scratches his chin and watches the fire. "It'll be a lucrative business for every outlaw in the surrounding states."

"Do you miss robbing trains?"

It had been a few years since they tried that kind of job, but they hadn't stayed long enough in one place to commit to it. They'd gotten a name for themselves in the East, built it up with robberies and killings. It didn't matter how righteous Dutch made it seem, or what tone he used to convince Hosea it was freeing, they were killers.

Enough of killers that for a few months they _couldn't _just vanish into the big open country and hope they would be forgotten. They were followed, and kept being followed until New Mexico where they shook the law off and finally vanished.

"_But we disappeared, didn't we__?_" Dutch asked had him.

He and Bessie eat and lay down to sleep that night under New Hanover's stars. She curls into him sometime around midnight and he begins to drift off, sleeping restlessly for the next several hours.

They were to ride to the Van Horn trading post, then take a boat up the Lannahechee River that would take them Northeast and to Delaware.

They saw only a prison wagon on their way through Roanoke Ridge's thick woods, but Hosea swore as they stopped to relieve themselves that he heard whispering. Silver Dollar begins to get antsy as they move further through the woods, almost hearing the whispering too.

Hosea makes friends in Van Horn with a group running from the noose back home. Their only crimes were living, they said, so they were going to go live somewhere better.


	4. Chapter Four

** _Denver, 1878_ **

Arthur had grown several inches since last year. Now threatening to turn sixteen, he stood at a strong five foot, ten inches. He was still thin, but not in an unhealthy way. The boy still had time to fill his clothes out, scavenging in trash forgotten as he got into the habit of hunting his own food.

Hosea held the fact he'd missed Arthur's first birthday with the gang over his own head since they'd arrived back from Delaware the previous year. They were forgiven as they showered Arthur with candies from the East, Hosea having bought him a gunbelt after arriving back. Arthur explained to them that he wasn't mad, but the blond could read disappointment in the boys face when they spoke together. He was glad to see Bessie again and made sure to update her on everything that had occurred in the month she and Hosea visited her family in Delaware.

"I'm sorry we missed your birthday, Arthur." she had told him.

He had shook his head, opening the bag of candy. "Is your ma alright?"

Ma Boulanger lived through her fever, much to some's joy and disappointment. Once she was able to leave her bedroom, Bessie took Hosea West at the soonest point in time for her and his sanity. The Boulanger family was the furthest point opposite of how Hosea had been raised, and even Bessie couldn't make sense of her parents. 

They had help raising her; the nanny had been called _mommy _a few times when Bessie was a girl, and the maid viewed Elizabeth as her own little sister until the family fired both when Bessie became a teen. Those were her outlets of true familial love before she and Susan met and developed a type of stiff sisterhood.

It had turned to June, close to July and Arthur's sixteenth birthday, but their celebration was to be a bank robbery in Denver with a far taller, broader and bigger Arthur who worked on his glare around the campfire.

Eoin wanted in, Hosea discovered after Dutch read a letter to him as they trotted through Denver on horseback. It was filled canvas wagons and a diverse set of cowboys and gunslingers. Business suits jogged across the road to get out of the way of carriages and horse manure on the cobblestone streets, ignoring beggars and the poor reaching for money and food.

"Eoin says he has his own gang, now." Dutch informs him. The Count walks with his nose in the air, white coat shining and bringing the beggars attention to them. Hosea meets his eyes and watches as the stiff hand lowers as the stare follows him, a covered wagon blocking his view.

The wagon passes and Hosea discovers the beggar had disappeared.

"Full of drunkards and murderers, no doubt." he responds. They'd crossed paths with the O'Driscoll boys back on the Canadian border in late winter when the snow had begun to melt and let them slosh through a killing.

Hosea decided against bringing Arthur to the meeting. He still had the image of the five foot fourteen year old, not a sixteen year old with a tendency for murder and robbery. He'd been growing into the killer Hosea knew Dutch wanted, and as he grew taller and older, Dutch saw more of an opportunity.

"I'm sure of it. And little Colm has been dragged all over the West by Eoin and his gang."

_Little _Colm was barely three years younger than Dutch.

"Is that where we're going? To the O'Driscoll boys?"

Dutch maneuvers around a kid in the street. "No, we're meeting Arthur at the gun store first."

Arthur was attempting to roll his own cigarette as the pair arrive at the store. He's spilled tobacco into his lap and filled the paper so much it can't close properly. He drops it into the dirt as Dutch whistles for his attention.

The boy grimaces at the spilled tobacco and lifts his head, pushing himself to stand.

"Come on, son. Its time you met the O'Driscoll boys." Dutch tells him.

Boadicea huffs as Arthur climbs into her saddle, steering towards them as Dutch starts off into a trot.

"I thought we didn't like them." Arthur's voice wavers over certain octaves, his voice needing to break. He clears his throat as he notices Hosea's grin, gripping the reigns. "At least I remember you sayin' we weren't gonna work with 'em again."

Dutch waves Arthur's statement off and continues down the busy road.

"They were drinking when all those threats happened-" he explains. "-there's plenty I've done while drunk that I'd like to be forgotten. No, I won't hold it against them. They can be dumb men, but that makes it all the better."

Green eyes turn to Hosea who rides on Dutchs other side. He looks up at the teen and shrugs lightly, Arthur shaking his head with furrowed brows.

"I thought them bein' dumb might... I dunno... cause the job to go wrong or somethin'."

Dutch shakes his head, greased black hair shimmering in the sun. "Between them, they've got half a brain. Eoin can lead, Colm can follow, but both can execute a job. I'm thinking we sneak some cash out from under them. It's easy! Unless they're looking at a woman or a bottle of drink, they ain't looking too hard."

"You're forgetting what Eoin did for cash back in Minnesota, Dutch." the oldest man intervenes. "He would've killed that girl in front of her grandparents had we not stopped him."

Dutch's shoulders grow stiff as the conversation dies around them. It was a brutal truth, but Eoin was a true monster compared to them and had no issue destroying anything in his way for a bit of money.

"Just think about it, Dutch." Hosea tells him.

"I _have _thought about it, _Hosea_."

God, that tone he used sometimes...

"I already know the O'Driscoll's will want to go over the plan a few times before committing to it, and I'll solve how we're gonna sneak our money past them from there."

"Does Susan want to do the bank?"

"She's mentioned it, but I'm not sure. I want you in this, Arthur. And not just on lookout anymore."

The teen raises his head, his jaw having chiseled a bit over the last year, his eyebrows growing thicker. Dutch looks over his shoulder and Arthur gives a soft grin.

"I'm up for anything, Dutch."

The dark haired man nods, turning back around in his saddle. "Good."

They find a trail of discarded garbage down a thin alleyway that leads them to a group of men playing cards over a broken table. One of them lifts his head, a stubbly Colm who analyzes the third in their newfound trio with intelligent interest before a bullet shatters a bottle.

Everyone jumps and reaches for their guns before Eoin marches out of the dark with an orange toothed grin.

"Van Der Linde," he says, pistol hanging on his finger. "I missed ya dearly."

"Eoin O'Driscoll," they greet each other with firm handshakes as Hosea relaxes and realizes he had put himself between the source of the gunshot and Arthur. "What an entrance!"

Eoin lets go of Dutchs hand as he spots Hosea, eyes roaming past him to the teenager staring from beside the blond. Eoin slips his pistol back into his gunbelt as the group grows quiet, stalking towards them with his eyes ablaze. He's surprised and interested, his glance to Hosea cluing in the oldest man to the fact Eoin already knew they were close.

"This must be the boy you were talkin' about." Eoin stops in front of them, his bicep brushing Hosea's shoulder as he stares down at Arthur. "He looks... young."

"He might be young, but he's strong." Dutch has already pranced back over to lay his hands over Arthur and pry him from Hosea's side.

He steers the teen around and presents him, Arthur squaring his shoulders and lifting his chin as the O'Driscoll brothers and their gang shift where they are.

"Arthur Morgan," Dutch says. "A real killer."

Colm has stood from the broken table in curiosity, Hosea watching as he meanders close to his brothers side but stays outside of his field of vision. The younger O'Driscoll keeps glancing to Eoin with an air of alert, keeping his quiet interest as silent as he could.

"Yeah?" Eoin asks. He scratches the back of his head where a knot of a scar sits beneath his hairline, dirt speckling his collar. "You always been a killer, or has Dutch helped you out with that?"

The group stays silent as Arthur thinks over his answer. Hosea glares as Dutch elbows the boy subtely, the teen responding.

"The first thing I learned to do after walkin' and talkin' was killin'." Someone from the back of the brick courtyard laughs as the O'Driscoll brothers grin.

"Really now?" Eoin leans in, Arthur unmoving and unphased as the older man looks him up and down, eyes lingering on Arthur's boots before coughing out a laugh. "Prove it."

"He-" Hosea begins, but as he steps forward one of Eoin's men grabs him by the shoulders and drags him back into place. Angered, the blond strikes the other man on the jaw, watching as he stiffly crumples to the ground.

Another charges and gets hit by the butt of Eoin's gun, gripping their nose and stumbling back as Hosea looks towards the rest of the group. He's holding his knuckles in pain, finding Dutch gripping Arthur by the back of the shirt to hold him in place. He's evidently tried to rush forth to help the blond, but stopped as Dutch grabbed him and allowed Hosea to fend for himself.

"Don't attack them!" Eoin complains and jabs the end of the pistol into the redheads chest. He receives a nod before Eoin smacks him upside the head and sends him to go sit back down at the broken table. "I wanted to see if big old Van Der Linde was telling the truth about the kid, Matthews."

Hosea glares as Eoin turns and looks at him.

"You'll have time in the future for that-"

"I say we stage a fight." Colm says. Dutch claps his hands together with a smile on his face, his eyes already burning with excitement as Hosea checks the teen's hard face and shakes his head. "What, Hosea? Afraid the boy won't be able to handle himself?"

"No," Hosea responds as the men scoop up his assailant from the ground and drag him to the O'Driscoll's side of the courtyard. "He can handle himself, but-"

"No buts!" Dutch announces and turns to the teen. "Arthur here will prove just what he needs to, won't you, son?"

Hosea's chest burns in anger while Arthur nods, staring past Dutch at the other men to size them up. Instead of choosing from the assortment of outlaws and law-breakers, the O'Driscoll's guide them through Denver streets in high spirits, searching for the boys worthy opponent.

Dutch walks with Eoin at the head of the group, Hosea at the back with Arthur as he watches everyone. Colm watches the back of Dutchs head like a hawk, hatching something in that puny, but functional brain of his. Eoin talks the whole way about what he already knows about the bank; the ins and outs, the security.

"What about the safes?" Hosea asks. A few heads turn, Eoin included as Dutch wanders on with the taller man at his side. "Do you know the police route?"

"We were leavin' that up to you boys." Colm answers for his brother. "Given y'all are so good at it."

Theres snickering from one side of the group and Hosea curls his lip as Dutch speaks.

"Why don't you take one of Eoin's boys here and check out the bank, Hosea?"

"And where are you all going?"

"Somewhat downtown." Eoin tells him. "Your friend here still has some proving to do, don't you, _Arthur Morgan_?"

Hosea turns his head slightly to see the teen better. He's a few inches shorter than Hosea now, enough that he doesn't need to go searching to see him. The scar on his chin is pink and theres smaller ones littering his face, grown out hair shining as he nods his head.

"Course." he responds.

"Arthur here will do what needs to be done, Eoin," Dutchs voice cuts in from the front again. "Don't you worry."

"I ain't worried 'bout your new killer, Van Der Linde. My concerns lie with how you'll do if he don't match up to all that talk you've been spewin'."

Hosea goes to the bank as he had been asked to do, passing two officers before rounding the end of the block to find his way to "somewhat downtown." The man Hosea took from Eoin's gang was relieved to be sent off to find a drink while the blond manuevered back through the streets and alleys. Its a primarily silent walk before he hears a round of cheers go up behind a brick wall.

"Come on, Morgan!" he hears Eoin through the noise.

Hosea scans the wall and finds a small entryway at the end between the side of a wagon and the next building. Its a tight squeeze, and Hosea loses his hat in the process before he stumbles through the other side. Backs face him as he stands and peers over shoulders in an attempt to find Dutch or Arthur.

He squeezes past betting men, something wet hitting him in the cheek as he passes through and finally sees Arthur in the middle of the ring. He's looks unnaturally small there, and the rest of the crowd sees it too. They're taunting him, shouting loudly as his opponent laughs and grabs Arthur. The other man is at least twice his size, muscle bound and built to fight. Matching him against Arthur was an unfair fight, but when Hosea sees Dutch from across the ring, he knows the dark haired man doesn't care.

He believes Arthur can still win.

Hosea wipes the droplet from his cheek and finds he's smeared blood across his skin. The blond rubs it off and turns to the man closest to him, a stocky individual beginning to lose his hair.

"You got a light?" he asks. The man nods as Hosea pulls one of his cigarettes from his vest, lighting it with the match the other offers him. He puffs away with thanks as his new friend begins talking.

"Dumb idea, putting a kid of his size against someone like that monster."

Hosea glances back at the ring in time to watch Arthur duck under the larger opponents arms, attempting to strike at his ribs. He gets a punch in, but the man grabs him by the back of the neck and throws him off.

"When do they end the match?"

The other shrugs, arms crossed over his chest. "Knockout. Death. Doesn't matter in fights like these. As long as one of them ain't moving anymore, the other wins."

Arthur was quick on his feet, agile almost. Numerous times he'd managed to sneak up on the gang during jobs or at camp, an ability he'd picked up as a pickpocket on San Francisco's streets.

But he hadn't been in a proper fight like this. Most of what he had done was tripping someone up for their cash or surprising them and slitting their throats. Bare knuckle fist fights in a back alleyway weren't what the fourteen year olds were doing in California, but it was what Dutch decided the boy would have to do to prove himself to the O'Driscoll brothers and their gang.

If Hosea intervened, he ran the risk of getting them all in trouble with Denvers criminals, the same criminals they would need if they planned on ever hitting the bank in town. He wanted to step in, remembering brawls he had when he was Arthurs age, but the boy was too focused to give up now.

With Dutch and Eoin's chatter behind him, Arthur kept diving from side to side, avoiding being caught and sticking his fists out to hit something. It was like punching a wall of meat, Arthur sweaty and tired as the fight droned on. It wasn't until his opponent managed to trip did Arthur charge, and even then it was a short-lived. The man began pushing his thumbs into Arthur's eyes and boos drowned out the cheering. The boy began shouting and Hosea grew tense before Arthur landed a solid punch into his opponents nose.

Blood spurted and the man dropped his arms. His hands drifted around in a hurt haze as Arthur punched again, then again, a third and fourth time until the crowd quieted and there was only the sound of knuckles hitting bone. The appointed leader of the game whistled and pointed to Arthur, Eoin motioning for his boys to step in and get the teenager.

He was mud-covered and bleeding, sweat mixing with the filth on his skin as the O'Driscolls stepped inside the ring to grab him. Arthur shoves them away, rolling off of his partially conscious opponent as Dutch stood and beamed on the sidelines.

It was almost disgusting. Arthur, dirt, blood, and sweat coating his body as he heaved and glared at the crowd like a bat out of hell while Dutch just smiled as if everything he had planned since leaving Philadelphia had come together at once.

Maybe it had.

Hosea brushes past the man who had given him a light and elbows his way through the grumbling crowd. An announcement is made that Arthur had won, most losing their bets in fits of anger as they glared at the exhausted boy.

"Matthews, you're back." Colm says as he notices him. The blond pushes past everyone and immediately checks the bleeding wound on the side of Arthur's head. "Morgan did real well. Dutch made a good choice with him."

"Out of the whole collection of street urchins..." Hosea mutters.

Arthur tries brushing him off, asking if Dutch had seen the fight. Hosea finds him collecting their part of the bet with a wide grin, Eoin laughing loudly and clapping Van Der Linde on the back. Hosea cleans off the boy as well as he can before finding Arthur's shirt and placing it over him. He can't walk straight, the boy mainly going into Hosea by accident.

"This paid off well-" he's ignoring Dutch, noticing the glares and brooding men watching them as he tries corraling Arthur out of the courtyard. "-easy cash."

_For you. _

"It seems Mister Matthews is in a rush." its the last Hosea hears of the O'Driscolls before guiding Arthur back through the alleys.

Hosea helps him button his shirt back on and uses his handkerchief to clean more blood and dirt off of him before they approach the horses. Beaten and bloody, Arthur climbs into the saddle with help from Hosea. Boadicea huffs once or twice in her concern. Arthur slumps further in the saddle, his eyes falling closed as Hosea pats his leg and speaks.

"Stay awake." he tells him. "Stay awake..."

\--

He was sixteen when his mother died. Sixteen when he dug a grave behind the cabin and laid her body to rest. He had wrapped her in a blanket and carried her down from the small cabin, her grey skin partially covered by the green blanket that was starting to lose its color.

He was sixteen when he enlisted, too, lying about his age to receive a gun and a uniform, readying himself along with his fellow soldiers to go to war with and against Americans. He'd been in a few battles, watched cannons blow men into the sky, watched as others sheathed swords into chests. Crows often came after battles, Hosea watching them with strangers blood on his hands and his uniform. They squawked and chirped, ravens joining them on blood covered fields as the nurses and doctors tried to save those that still had a chance.

Even if the soldiers lived, most often they died later from infection, Hosea watching some die to the bothersome churning of their own minds. Most often, proper silence never followed. Just crying from the mens beds and tents before gunfire resumed in backyards then reserved as battlefields.

Silence only came when he was twenty, freed from his service with some pay and food to keep him alive until he could find nearby work. It was the ringing silence, the uneasiness as senses remained heightened and eyes always kept watching. There was a fragment of metal still stuck somewhere near his lower spine that he could feel scraping against the bone if he twisted his body too far one way. It sat beside the lash marks he'd gotten from the stick his mother used to teach him a lesson.

The ghosts watched from the backs of mirrors or in the depths of water as he stared at his reflection. His mother was with the different soldiers some times, skin still grey but she had a ring of red around her throat where she'd managed to string herself up. The soldiers had missing limbs but blood still came pouring out, eyes rolling back into their heads as they unanimously screamed for him to wake up.

They would watch him in the dark at night sometimes, they followed him to the building where he'd discovered his father and seemed to linger there, relieving him of some of the bodily weight they had pushed on to his shoulders.

That weight threatened to come back as he robbed someone in Delaware. Bessie pushed it away when they met for the first time, that day when the world stopped and only she managed to exist. But sometimes, the ghosts tried to sneak up on him. They tried grabbing at Arthur, prying him away and dragging him into the dark as he begged them to leave the boy alone.

"Leave him!" he remembered screaming into an unforgettable chant as they ripped him away from the boy. their nails scratching at his skin. "He has done nothing to you!"

Their hands bound his arms and his legs, twisting his head side to side as they made him watch them take both the boy and his wife from him. She wept in this nightmare, crying as blue faced Arthur was carried off into the darkness. He followed in his dream, watching from afar as her weeping became angered sobbing at the sight of his own dead body. His chest was opened, blood staining tailored clothes as his ribs pushed through the fabric like claws. His body's eyes were open, watching him as the ghostly hands paraded him like a fine hunt having been caught.

He pries himself from the hands and tries running. A fruitless effort as Bessie screams a thousand screams and causes his body to fall to the ground. He wants to hold her and help her, but as his fingers dare to brush her arm, her eyes burn orange with flame and he finds himself falling through the ground, submerged in black water.

Choking and drowning, he tries going back up to be free, to find Bessie, but he's stuck dying in the murky water. Hands grab him by the throat and turn him, his own dead body glaring back with an image of Dutch reflecting in his eyes. Hosea stops struggling, brows furrowing as the image of Dutch plays in his own eyes like a moving picture. Guns, a shootout that ends with Van Der Linde glaring back at him.

Arthur replaces the image, his eyes black as blood drips from the corners of his mouth. He opens his mouth, but to shout or scream, Hosea does not know. Instead the moving picture changes again as his exposed ribs brush up against his stomach, showing a new grave with _B. Matthews_ engraved on a tree trunk.

"_No._" he breathes into the water.

His dead body tightens its grip around his throat, pushing itself against him as its mouth opens and its lips move.

"The ghosts will follow you to the grave."

The suffocating Arthur bares his teeth in the water, Bessie screaming into his ear as he hears Dutchs laughter, the black water pushing into his lungs as his own dead body pushes away and watches him drown.

\--

Hosea wakes with a rapid startle, his heart racing and body shivering as Bessie stirs beside him. He takes short breaths and tries focusing on the rate of his heart he could feel trying to break free from his ribs.

He groans gently and lets his head fall into his hands at the flash image of what he'd looked like in his nightmare with an open chest and life gone behind his eyes. He can hear Dutch laughing again, but this time its accompanied by Susan as she giggles and tries telling him to move over.

He rolls his head back to listen to his neck pop before he pushes the flap of the tent open to step out for some cool air. Arthur sits by the embers of the fire with the rifle at his side. He's watching Hosea approach in the dark, his head lifting somewhat higher as he notices the restless motions of the older man.

"What time does Dutch take over?" Hosea asks him. Arthur shakes his head as he opens a jar.

"Sometime soon. I don't mind stayin' up."

"I do." Arthur glances away to his peaches as Hosea sits down harshly beside him. "You need to sleep, too."

"Dutch's the one with all the plans."

"He can't go over them while he's sleeping, can he?"

Arthur shakes his head some, pinching the peach slice as he slides it from the jar. He holds it above his mouth, biting at it like a fish at a hook. He offers the jar to Hosea and the older man takes it, slipping a slice from the glass container.

They eat in silence as they listen to the darkness around them. The chirping from the crickets replaced the mischevious giggling coming from Dutch and Susan in their tent, giving Arthur and Hosea the well needed quiet.

The teen turns slightly to the older man, eyes on the embers.

"When did you and Bessie get married?"

Hosea watches the dark horizon, feeling the stare rise to the side of his head.

"November of '68. We'd met the year before that and I spent every day trying to prove myself to her." the side of his mouth curls into a partial smile. "It was a nice little ceremony."

He sees Arthur nod his head in his peripheral vision.

"Did you con people before then, or...?"

"I did. She knew what I was the moment she met me, but still saw something in this angry man." he turns his eyes to the teen and finds him grinning softly. "I did a different kind of work for a while, the more respectful kind. But I... I got drawn back in and met Dutch."

Arthur nods again, laying his chin in his hand.

"So Dutch _wasn't _at your wedding?" he shakes his head. "Oh... I just guessed he had been."

"No... Dutch likes to tell people he had been, though. Makes him feel better."

Arthur chuckles and shifts the gun in his lap. They share several minutes of comfortable silence between them, Hosea's thoughts wandering back to the Denver slums fight Arthur had won by accident.

They hadn't discussed it since they left, but Hosea saw the pride coming off Dutch in waves when he was around Arthur and the joy in the boys face as he pocketed his share of the cash from the fight. He'd gotten a bad hit on his head that day that forced him on his ass more times than Hosea liked to count. He'd also struggled with blurred vision for the few hours following, but Dutch just expected him to fix it.

"Do you like fighting?" Hosea asks suddenly.

Theres a space of silence as the boy considers the question, crickets chirping among them in the dark.

"I'm used to having to fight for what I want." Arthur turns his head and meets Hosea's eyes. "Fighting ain't nothin' new."

"You didn't answer my question."

Arthur's eyes dull and he shrugs his shoulders. "Don't love or hate it none..."

"Fighting for what you want, what are you fighting for with us?"

The teen looks up almost in surprise. "I'm fightin' for the freedom Dutch talks about. My American dream and... the right to live my life free from the law. What do you think I'm fighting for?"

Hosea leans forth suddenly, Arthur's jaw going tense as his eyes widen in subtle fear.

"I don't know, kid. Are you fighting for your freedom? Or the freedom Dutch talks about?"

"Dutch's talk of freedom is the only one I know. He says that we don't need to adhere to rules. That we'll keep per-perseverin' through it all and come out the other end stronger than _them_."

"Who's 'them'? Do you even know what Dutch is talkin' about, Arthur?"

The teenager shakes his head. "I... I only guessed Dutch and me share the same sort of enemies." Hosea straightens and leans away from the boy. "I'm sorry if I said somethin' wrong-"

The older man shakes his head as he crosses his arms, gaze turning to the dead embers of the fire laying at his feet. "You didn't say anythin' wrong. And I wish I could show you it properly, but there's more to the world that fighting and killing to earn respect and keep your place in the world. It took me a long while to learn it," Hosea meets Arthur's curious eyes. "But I realised freedom and happiness, its there if you search hard enough. Don't think you've gotta cover your hands in blood to be seen as a person. Dutch may say a lot, but it don't mean he's right."

Arthur stares in confusion, mouth trying to move to form words.

"Did you hear me?"

The boy blinks and nods. "Yes-yeah, yeah I-I heard you. I'm just..." Hosea turns to the sound of movement, Dutch pushing his way from his tent like the devils shadow in the dark. "I'll understand it later." 


	5. Chapter 5

This was their America.

America where they were truly and rightfully free. Where they fought against the law, the land, and moral high ground as they waded through the shit and blood that made up their pedestals.

Their America was no different than any others. America to some was the epitome of freedom as they worked themselves into the ground and wondered if they didn't try hard enough. America to others had been stolen out from under them as they were shepherded into prisons and jails, to reservations as their children were taken from them and converted.

But their America, their America was earned.

They fought tooth and nail for every Goddamn piece of it, lost family to wars, to famine. Sometimes they lost themselves in the high of adrenaline after a shootout. Once or twice they could share memories of those they lost, relatives both by blood and respect.

Most of the time, they were too wrapped up in getting themselves to the next place that a true connection was never made.

Hosea never asked Dutch about his life before conning. Most things he learned over a drink, or during a quiet moment of reflection. Honesty wasn't Dutch's strong suit, no matter how convicted he may have acted, or how strong the emotion in his eyes may have been. Hosea Matthews knew a liar; he worked as one for money and the food in his belly.

Eoin O'Driscoll was a taller, more brutal version of Dutch. Angry, greasy, most of the time filthy and drinking, he was like a mirror image to what Dutch _could have _been had things been different. He didn't have the way with words or the charismatic charm Van Der Linde seemed to pull off so well.

Hosea got to see to what level Eoin would push the limits during the bank heist. Colm wasn't much better, Hosea coming in after a loud distraction outside to find two of the guards dead and the bank teller with a gun barrel pointed at his throat. Arthur was guarding the door, eyes flashing to and from the window as he and two of the O'Driscoll's men tried to keep the small crowd under control. Susan had already stripped everyone of their guns and was keeping a safe eye on them. Bessie had run distraction inside the bank, giving the rest of the group to wander inside without cause for alarm.

Hosea motions Arthur to the bank vault as he steps over a body, hearing Colm shout at the teller to let them in. It could be a big take, robbing this bank successfully. There was plenty he could do with the money from this, as long as he and Dutch's plan of stealing it from under the O'Driscoll's noses worked.

A woman is crying on the floor, sobbing because one of the guards had been her friend.

"Will one of you shut that bitch up?" Its Eoin in the depths of the vault. "Shut her up, or I'll do it my damn self!"

Hosea stops by the vault door as Arthur slips inside. Dutch has his ear pressed against a safe as he tries cracking the lock to let them in for the take. Morgan jogs to Eoin and stops him from lighting a stick of dynamite to get them in, the younger O'Driscoll shoving Arthur from his brother's side.

"Colm!" Hosea shouts. The teen glares back at Colm, fingers twitching beside his gun holster.

"Arthur!" Dutch interrupts the tension with a crack in his voice. "Come help me break this lock."

Matthews' glare doesn't leave Colm's eyes as the younger man slowly lowers his gun to the floor. Eoin soon hits him and points him to safe beside his own, yelling for him to open it. Hosea can hear more shouting, but its coming from outside and none of them are any recognizable voice.

"The cops are outside!" Teeth, Eoin's boy, shouts from the front doors. "What do you want me to do, boss?"

"Shoot 'em!"

"Don't!" Hosea steps out in time to watch as Susan grabs Teeth by the patchy red hair and shoves him back. "This needs to go over smoothly."

"We can't do shit if we gots us bullets in our heads!" Teeth shrugs her hand from his collar.

"And we can't do much more if the entire Denver police force comes after us," Bessie tells him and crosses the floor. She puts herself between Grimshaw and the redhead, grip tight on her rifle. "Wait until they shoot first."

Eoin storms out of the vault lugging a bag heavy with cash. "You in charge of my boys, woman?"

"Just makin' sure you don't get us all killed."

Hosea forgets the vault and the money in that moment. Eoin believes his brawn and towering height is enough to scare Bessie into hiding, so he squares himself and steps into her space. She lifts the rifle and pushes it into his crotch, cocking it as her eyes train on his brow.

"I have no issue shooting your balls off, O'Driscoll."

Eoin's head turns slowly to the rifle between his legs before he cracks a grin and steps back. He holds Bessie's glare as Dutch drops a bag of money into Hosea's hands, Arthur marching out after him with Colm close in tow.

The officers outside are trying to get in through the doors held closed only by O'Driscoll's men. They've begun hitting them with their bodies now, grunting on the other side as Colm searches for another way out. Hosea adjusts the bag on his shoulder as Bessie removes the other, Colm sprinting back to his older brother.

"The only way out is those doors." he tells them.

There's a stiffness in the air as Dutch looks to the floor with an expression reserved for panicked thinking. Arthur steps closer to Bessie before Eoin holds up his gun and points it at the still slamming doors.

"Get out the way, boys."

His men share a look before stepping out of the way, the police bursting in and stumbling before gunshots ring out. Everything else becomes a high string blur as Hosea keeps Bessie and Arthur on one side as they run behind the hail of gunfire, Dutch pleased as he fires off his pistols. The horses neigh in frustration as they arrive, Hosea turning and firing at the officer that followed them down the street. Eoin still fires manically ahead of them as his younger brother desperately tugs at him to get him out of the line of fire. The older O'Driscoll shoves him off and reloads as Arthur climbs into the saddle and Bessie coos at Gloria to let her on her back. Boadicea leads the ride out of Denver, Hosea's eyes trained on the teen who rides the wind out of the city and into the wilderness.

Teeth gets shot by a plainclothes officer riding after them. Hosea watches bloody bubbles burst and stream from his mouth as he reaches to the hole in his chest and slides off the saddle. Eoin's horse stomps his skull as the group continues riding out, leaving him for dead on the road outside of Denver.

\--

"Teeth was a waste of life anyways."

Late October, 1879. Eoin O'Driscoll pays his final respects to the dead man that got shot on their way out of Denver with a solid amount of cash in their pockets. They'd been hiding out these past few months, laying as low as they possibly could with impulsive and strong headed Dutch Van Der Linde wanting to strike at every opportunity.

They're fishing in a creek leading to the lake, Hosea and Arthur on opposite shores as Eoin smokes a few yards down with Dutch seated beside him. Colm had taken the rest of the O'Driscoll gang job hunting and wouldn't be back for a few more hours. Their camp is pitched in the trees behind them, a line drawn in the dirt to separate the desperate and disgusting O'Driscoll's from the Van Der Linde's.

Susan and Bessie hadn't done a thing without keeping an eye and an ear open, guns at the ready. The girls almost shot Colm, and so had about everyone else when it came to a bottle of alcohol and a mean temper he'd inherited from one of his inbred relatives. Eoin seemed to keep to himself now that they moved in a larger group, but his eyes still followed curved and _younger _bodies when the group wasn't looking too hard at him.

They're wrapped in their coats as the cold water runs past. He'd only been able to catch one or two fish, small ones, but Arthur was having better luck.

"You must be stealing my fish." Hosea tells the teen as he hoists another from the water and grins happily at it.

He drops it in the bucket beside himself and wipes his fingers on his jeans. "You must've taught me too well."

The older man manages a grin and glances at the water as something causes his rod to quiver. He can't help the tension that rises in his spine when Dutch isn't talking, especially with Eoin crouched and watching them. He looks over to check on them and finds Eoin's still staring at young Arthur with a low fire behind his eyes.

Hosea dips his head to inspect the creekbed, his grip tightening around the handle of the fishing rod.

"Why are you lookin' at Arthur so hard for?" Dutch asks. "You seein' somethin' we can't?"

Arthur glances to them, then lifts his gaze and holds it on them as Eoin speaks.

"What you mean by that?"

Hosea lifts his head and ignores the tugging at his line as Dutch lifts his head from its resting place against the bark of the tree. The dark haired man smirks and shrugs.

"Nothin' at all."

Eoin's fingers clench the dirt as his jaw tenses. "Don't you fucking lie to me, Van Der Linde."

"I'm not, friend." Dutch raises his hands jokingly as his grin widens. "It didn't mean a thing, just took note of your awfully focused look on Arthur there."

Eoin stands suddenly, his fists ready at his sides as Dutch stares up at him with an amused look on his face.

"_Get up_."

Dutch's eyes meet Hosea's momentarily until he begrudgingly stands. Every second he takes to get up and face Eoin angers the O'Driscoll even more, Eoin landing a smack on the side of Dutch's cheek.

Van Der Linde takes a surprised step back, jaw somewhat slack. Arthur tenses but Hosea holds his hand up, beginning to set his rod quietly at his side. The boy follows his motions as Eoin grabs Dutch by the shirt and shoves him into the tree.

"Why don't shut your mouth, filthy Yankee." Dutch's lips curl in an angered expression as Hosea reaches for his gun. "You're just a bitch hiding behind a bastard son, ain't you? Shitty leader, shitty liar... All your gold is just tainted _shit_."

Eoin shoves him into the tree a last time for final measure before dragging Dutch to the side to punch him. The younger man ducks and side steps the taller outlaw, taking a large step back to avoid another swing. He grabs Eoin by the throat and pushes him away, the O'Driscoll stumbling and falling onto his ass only to be smeared in mud.

The other two at the side of the creek relax some as Dutch gives them an _okay_. He seems slightly shaken and surprised, eyes somewhat blown. He lets out a quick breath and stoops to pick something up as the Hosea and Arthur move to settle, but Eoin moves in a rush and tackles Dutch into the dirt.

Hosea grabs his gun again and sticks his hand out to keep Arthur back as the two men roll in the dirt and splash into the creek. Dutch sticks his head up for air and lands his elbow in the side of Eoin's neck, forcing the taller man to shrug his head to the side. It gives Dutch enough leeway to shimmy out from under him and scramble out of the creek bed. Eoin bursts from the water with a pointed rock in his hands, lunging at Dutch with the wet stone bared like a claw. A gunshot rings out and Eoin stops abruptly, his mouth falling open and eyes growing wide as he lightly rocks back and forth.

There's a hole in his head. Its perfectly circular, a drop of blood streaming down the middle of his brows and down the side of his nose. There's a tense moment of silent resolve before another shot rings out and causes Eoin to drop the rock, his fingers touching the well rounded hole now in his stomach as well. He lifts his bloody fingers in front of his face and sputters something incoherent, Hosea watching as Eoin takes an unsteady step back and turns, the strength of his body giving out only to send him face down into the creek.

That unforgettable quiet follows. The creek still splashes around him, O'Driscoll blood streaming from his dirty body and mixing with the water. Hosea heard Arthur release the breath he'd been holding, the blood passing them in the creek to slowly become a steady stream headed for the lake. He lifts his eyes to Arthur and finds the teen watching the running, quiet water with a look of surprise. Hosea turns and finds Dutch still holding the pistol up, a small waft of smoke floating from the end of the barrel.

"You shot 'im." Arthur mutters.

Van Der Linde's eyes grow cold, an emotionless breath leaving his mouth as he pushes the gun into its holster. He watches the body in the water, held in place by the single large rock that diverted the waters path. Dutch shows nothing as he lifts his chin.

"Dutch, you shot him." Hosea repeats. His friend turns his hard eyes to them both, dirt and pine needles covering him as droplets of water freckle his face.

"It was us, or him." he growls.

Dutch steps back in the direction of camp and Hosea watches the back of his head as Susan's fingers slide through his hair. Arthur hops across the water and comes to Hosea's side, eyes still watching the body in the creek. The rushing water under Eoin makes it seem as if he's still alive and only drowning.

_The ghosts will follow you to the grave._

"Are you boys alright?" its Bessie, her rifle slung over her shoulder so she can lay one hand on each of their arms. Hosea gives a curt nod as Arthur visibly stiffens and leans into her.

"I saw ya chargin' when Dutch first fired." Arthur says quietly.

"I'm ready against anybody that tries to hurt you two." she runs a hand affectionately through the boy's outgrown hair, her fingers squeezing Hosea's bicep.

His eyes still watch the body in the water as Bessie turns and stares, their wish to rid of him having come true in one of the worst possible ways. Hosea finds himself sighing and bringing his hand to his wife's hip, looking at her as she turns her head back to her boys.

Her grey eyes meet his creased brow, her gaze worried and cold. There's thousands of thoughts running through their heads shared in a single moment on the shore of the Colorado creek.

"We need to go." she whispers. "Far away from this."

But he hadn't yet settled on if she meant the body, or the whole heap of mess that would no doubt follow Eoin O'Driscoll's death.

\--

The Matthews wedding in 1868 was an entire extended family affair to celebrate the coming together of two families. Hosea had paced back and forth in the Boulanger parlor for most of the day in his suit as his fianceé's cousins laughed and smoked at his expense.

"You should be worried," one had sneered. "She'll run out of the wedding before you've got any chance of slipping a ring on her finger!"

Hosea had followed with a snarky remark he'd quickly forgotten as he was pushed from the home and quickly taken to the Wilmington church ahead of his fianceé. The woman soon to be his mother in law had followed him inside where the pews were filling with every relative of the Boulanger family that had stepped foot on North American soil.

He had marched down the aisle to the alter with his eyes trained on the priest, voices murmuring and relatives joking before Bessie arrived. Her skirt was long and wide, made of multiple layers of white lace that ghosted over the floor. It had connected to the midsection of her corset and burst with the same bushy frill for the collar and sleeves.

Hosea had taken her arm and stood at attention in front of the minister as he began the service, his brown eyes skittering over her face partially hidden behind the veil.

"You look handsome." she whispered. "I look ridiculous."

Hosea had let out a quiet, nervous laugh and gently shook his head as his cheeks burned.

"The dress looks ridiculous-" the priest droned on in front of them. "-but you wear it well."

Her mouth had twitched into a sweet smile as her grey eyes softened and she squeezed his arm in front of the crowd. Hosea had repeated the priests words, his eyes staring into her own until she followed and spoke the same to him. He had slipped a ring on her finger and gazed at the glimmer of the band before the priest pronounced them as married.

She had very happily kissed him on the steps despite the uproar from her relatives and Hosea had never laughed with so much warmth in his chest. It was the one day in fall where the sun managed to shine the brightest, orange and red leaves the painted backdrop of their wedding. He'd fallen in love with her again that day as they danced to band's music, this time without having to worry about making too much noise on her wooden floors. He had held her as close as he'd wanted in the midst of a slow moving crowd around them. The minutes they danced eased to a slower pace than that he had experienced when their eyes had first met. The dresses and bodies around them melted away, but the light blue in the sky churned and mixed with the falling red leaves, themselves a contradicting black and white to the flurry of color around them.

It was a whirpool behind grey eyes that watched him like he was the only thing of importance in her world. The first thing he'd been privy to her truly fighting for was him. The rough boy from out of state that had given so much of himself those last thirteen months to be with her, he was what she stood up for. Like an angel fighting for the sins of a dirty devil, she was, but she could breathe a hotter fire than any pit of hell.

They twirled together, her hand gripping his fingers as the violin strummed and the red around them blurred into orange and blue.

The day of their wedding was the day she stripped herself of being Elizabeth Boulanger and took every pride in being Bessie Matthews. His best friend, the brightest star in his universe and he had the beautiful privilege to call her his wife.

"_You're my wife_." he'd whispered in the dark of their own small apartment.

She had twirled and danced to him, cupping his face in front of the window with every bit of love pouring from her eyes. His shoes, jacket, and vest had been forgotten somewhere in the dark and she was ridding of his tie and overshirt with gentle hands.

"How in the hell are you my wife?"

She'd undone the first few buttons of his underclothes before she'd let out a breathless laugh and pulled him into her neck.

"And you're my husband! The day we thought would never come!" Her face had fallen when she had pulled back and saw the tears falling from his soft brown eyes. "Darling-"

"I'm happy, I promise." he'd made many promises that day, to her family, to her friends, in front of another persons God and a righteous man that praised the Lord once they were wed. But they were also tears of relief, tears of such pure elation it managed to almost hurt him.

She ran her thumbs over his cheekbones and seated him on the windowsill, squeezing in beside him so they could look at the large shining moon. A full moon, not yet covered by November clouds that dared to hide her shining light.

She continued to wipe his tears as he cried in front of the window, the moon keeping guard above them. Each time the moonlight gleamed against the wedding band he'd slipped onto her finger earlier in the day, a reminder that they truly _were _married now.

Hosea had caught her hand and held it to his cheek the final time she tried to wipe his tears. He let the drops fall as he turned his head and laid a gentle kiss to her wrist, then her palm. Bessie had shifted forth and sat herself in his lap to hold him, arms around the back of his neck as he kept her warm hand against his lips.

_This_ was their freedom.

Not the freedom spurred on by American rage, nor the breaking of supported rules and laws.

This feeling was love so freeing it trembled within him like a great cascade of emotion, something he'd been searching for so long he finally realized was true and real.

And it wasn't going to run from him. This freedom wasn't afraid of him, nor angry or spiteful. It didn't have something to protect from him, or anything to hide and keep out of his reach. It was purely good of heart and came in the form of the most wonderful person he could ever have the chance of meeting.

She was the embodiment of the dreams he had as a boy where he envisioned himself running through the great plains in his story books, wind in his short cut hair and tears falling from his eyes as he shouted through the tall grass all of his joy and happiness. She was the stars he would watch and name as a child hiding in the dark. She was the adrenaline pumping through his chest the first time he rode a horse away from his hometown. She was those comfortable and quiet evenings where he would sit and listen to She Pushes Mountains tell her boy a story he couldn't understand, but it gave him such comfort he found himself falling asleep to it anyways.

Bessie was everything kind and gentle he'd needed in the world. She _was _his world, his life and he could share the most important moments with her like she was his own thoughts.

Their wedding night she had soothed him and kissed his cheek, whispering _I love you _so lovingly it made him hurt again.

"I love you, Hosea." she said again, louder this time. "I'll never stop loving you."

He gazed up at her and smiled gently, his fingers intertwining with her own.

"I love you, too."

She kissed his knuckles and laid her cheek on his hand, giggling as she leaned forth and pushed her head into his chest.

\--

1880\. Arthur Morgan turns seventeen.

He's six feet now and only growing broader the more he works. They're herding cows across the plains of the midwest to sell at auction. Arthur keeps hooting at the animals to keep them in line, sweat dripping down his face and into his shirt collar.

Hosea keeps his eye on the teen from a distance, riding at the back left of the formation of cowboys and their _vaquero _friends. Alvaro is the man he rides beside. He's got a gleaming pistol with a cross carved into the ebony handle, a burn in his eyes to accompany it.

Theres a scar that cuts through his lip and up to his glossed over eye. He jokingly stated that he could _see a persons sins _with it, and sometimes over a bottle of whisky, it felt like he really could.

"Your boy," Alvaro leans over in his saddle as they trot alongside the herd. "He doesn't seem to like authority."

That fact would be difficult to miss.

The first time they met their new boss, Arthur had spit about how they should have been paid more for the work. Last night under the stars, he'd almost started a fight with one of Alvaro's men, Efren, because he didn't like how he had been looking at him.

"Its his uncle's fault." Hosea responds over the noise of herding shouts.

Dutch had instilled a strong sense of hatred for anything bigger, meaner, or louder than them. Efren was fifty pounds heavier than Arthur and built purely out of muscle _made _for moving heavy animals and fighting to keep himself safe. Of course Dutch's words had been miscontruded into a mess of _fight everyone and everything, its all your enemy_. Since shooting Eoin back in Colorado, the pressure had been put on Arthur to be the up and coming killer. Many fights he had won, a broken nose and Dutchs approval his reward. But now, months later, he didn't know where living and fighting separated.

Alvaro lets out a well-rounded laugh that can be heard over the rumbling of hooves. Arthur looks up and meets Hosea's eyes, pulling the rim of the black hat over his gaze. The older man sees his jaw tense as he turns his head away, letting out a loud holler at one of the cows straying from the herd.

"Go get 'im!"

Arthur pulls the lasso from the saddle and rides after the animal in a cloud of dust.

"His uncle might end up getting him killed if he isn't careful." Alvaro says as they watch the dust cloud hover in the air.

He and Bessie had ended up saying Arthur was their son when they met Enoch, the man paying them to get his cattle across state to the auction yard. Dutch grew irritated about it when they told him, sputtering on about roles and a story they could keep to.

"I call him son." Dutch had argued.

"Cause that would be more believable than Arthur and Bessie being related." Susan retorted. Hosea had gestured to her and Dutch turned with the infuriated look on his face.

"Arthur!"

"Don't bring him into it." Hosea spit.

That was a week ago, and he hadn't seen Dutch since they split ways for work. Now Arthur spent his birthday on horseback glaring at anyone he decided wasn't good enough to look at him.

Alvaro's words admittedly struck a nerve within him, but every argument he had to justify Dutchs actions came rushing back. He was his friend, the leader. He brought Arthur into he and Bessie's lives like some sort of divine intervention, but he was still burning down that road of getting them all shot and killed. Hosea _did _want to leave, but he wanted to leave to keep Bessie out of it. There were plenty of things they had struggled through during their time on the run; their own differences coming to a head, lawmen and enemies after them, the loss of the opportunity to have a child, now Colm killing out of vengeance across the states in some reign of terror in the name of his dead brother.

A feud was beginning. Or rather, it had already begun. The moment that bullet went through Eoin's head was the second everything started. Dutch excused his actions by the need to survive and keep himself at a distance from Colm. Colm rampaged across America, just barely crossing paths with his growing gang as the men under him hunted down Dutch Van Der Linde and Hosea Matthews for what they had done.

Already two shootists they had picked up in hopes of expanding Dutch's gang had gotten killed at the hands of the O'Driscoll's. One, Ricky his name was, had been strung up and dragged behind a horse. The other was just a kid, Hugh. He wasn't much older than Arthur and had been obviously defiled when they found him. It was as if vultures had been given the time to have their way, and though Hosea knew that it could very easily be any of them, Dutch just said a few comforting words with no true meaning and wandered off to find someone new.

He needed a break, so Bessie went ahead down the route to meet he and Arthur at the other end of it once they managed to get the cows to the auction yard.

Hosea lets out a long sigh as he moves Silver Dollar out of the way.

"You might just have a point there, friend."

They'd gotten the cows to the auction yard by sunset and Hosea was lighting a match, breathing in his first puff of cigarette smoke in about a day. He shuts his eyes as the cowbells and hooves mix into the air behind him, Hosea slowly exhaling it from his nose as someone comes to his shoulder.

"You got anymore tobacco?"

He glances and nods, digging into his saddlebag for the box before he hands it over. Arthur grabs it but Hosea doesn't let go, the boys green eyes lighting with anger as he looks back up.

"You owe an apology to a couple of the men here."

Arthur's eyebrows furrow. "I didn't-"

"Don't argue the point with me. You ain't that thick-headed or dumb," he tugs the small box away and points to Efren. "Start with him."

The teen scoffs and crosses his arms, shifting his weight forward in an attempt to make himself seem taller and bigger than he really was. "Dutch-"

"Dutch ain't here!" Arthur falters and takes half a step back from the older man. Hosea swallows and lowers his voice. "Dutch ain't here, and I ain't Dutch. Now, do as I _say_."

Arthur stares with a slack jaw for several seconds before huffing and dropping his arms. Hosea takes another drag on his cigarette in hopes of breathing away the tension in his back. He blows it out in a large sigh as Alvaro approaches with his gun gleaming in its holster. Hosea can just barely see Arthur inching uncomfortably closer to Efren to carry out what the older man asked of him.


	6. Chapter Six

Arthur had dragged his feet and walked past Hosea in silence after delivering his apology. With Alvaro's aid, the older man solved where the hotel Bessie was staying in was and bid the other man farewell in hopes of seeing him again one day.

The ride to the town an hour over was silent and tense between the two of them, Arthur still having not gotten his cigarette. Hosea keeps the box in his slacks pocket as they ride, his eye moving up from the road occasionally as they take the dark, dirt roads and try to read shadowed roadsigns.

Hosea removes the cracked pocketwatch from his jacket and checks the time as he spots dim lights in the distance, the buildings shadows against the dark blue night sky. He slips it back in and turns Silver Dollar closer to Boadicea's side, Arthur lifting his chin slightly as their knees knock together and the horses greet each other.

"Stop a second, kid." he says. Arthur slows to a stop as Hosea shifts in the saddle and comes to his side, eyes trained on the curve of road ahead of them. "I don't want their to be any... tension, between you and I before we see Bessie. She'll be excited to see us."

The teen nods and gives a quiet _sure. _He sighs quietly and straightens his back as the older man turns his head and watches him, Arthur struggling over his words before speaking again.

"I'm sorry." the boy glances, then glares at the mud under Hosea's inquisitive gaze. "I'm sorry for... bein' rude. Bein' mean for no reason to the rest of the herders."

The blond shrugs. "It wasn't directed at me."

"Nah, but I know that the way I act, it-I... _shit_, I don't know what I'm tryin' to say... it shows on you when I act like a fool, and it ain't fair."

Hosea studies the tightness attempting to be forcibly eased within the boys jaw. "You've got it. The way you act is a reflection upon the others you're with."

Arthur nods gently. "_Reflection_... thats what I was lookin' for."

"I appreciate you apologizin' to me. You sound like you mean it, too."

"Course I do!" Arthur retreats some into the saddle as his eyes avoid Hosea's. "And... I know you ain't Dutch. You're-I- thanks for _not _bein' Dutch."

The older man lets out a surprised laugh and the boy breathes out his own youthful chuckle.

"That might be the nicest thing you've said to me." Hosea kicks Silver Dollar into a trot.

Arthur and Boadicea follow alongside, the two of them riding into town in easy conversation and jokes about Dutch. Jokes that Arthur says make Hosea laugh well enough, but there's still that underlying sting when the darker underside of what he says comes out. The killing of Eoin and their running from the ordeal became an easy joke between the Matthews side of the group a few months after they'd left Colorado for the midwest. Turning dark situations into humor was a way of dealing with the situation Hosea had run into only after meeting Bessie; Arthur had inherited the habit from them in one of the softer ways to vent his frustrations.

"I _like _this!" Arthur states with such a guffaw it startles the women crossing in front of the hotel doors.

Hosea, surprised but pleased with Arthur's happiness, doesn't comment as he slides from the saddle and pets Silver Dollar for his hard work.

"What do you like?"

"Jokin' with you. Talkin'." Arthur drops to the ground and rounds the horses after haphazardly hitching Boadicea to the post. "It's real nice. Not like Dutch or Susan. You can't tell Susan nothin' that don't get back to Dutch one way or another."

Hosea snorts and slings the bag over his shoulder as Arthur grabs the other. "You can tell her plenty and it won't get back to Dutch. What you've got to watch out for is if he's listenin' in or not. Ricky had been reporting into him for a while but... Ricky wasn't _trying _to get any of us in trouble."

"Ricky ain't like that." Arthur's face falls. "Or... more like, he _weren't _like that."

"I'll leave the correcting to Bessie, but you aren't wrong."

They feed the horses and start for the hotel doors.

"I can't talk with Dutch like I can you and Bessie. You... well, y'all seem to really _listen_ to me. Dutch listens well enough, probably too well... that makes for bad luck cause he turns it into more of his Goddamn lectures."

The blond huffs a laugh and reaches for the hotel doors, making a show of rolling his eyes as the boy looks at him.

"You don't have to tell _me_."

They step inside and ask after the blond woman from out of state that should have left the manager with their names and information. He points to the hallway to his left and the two nod before stepping away.

"She said you can find her at the saloon down the way. She only left a short while ago."

Hosea thanks the man and leads Arthur to the small room where Bessie's things are piled at the foot of the bed.

"You know, Arthur Morgan," he drops their things on the floor beside the nightstand and turns to the teen as he eases the bags from his own shoulders. "I'm glad you enjoy speaking with Bessie and I so much. You know, she loves you. She's never been a mean or spiteful person to the people she cares about, but I think you've managed to change our lives for the better. I hope we can do the same for you."

Arthur's mouth opens as the bags hit the floor. His cheeks turn a light shade of pink before he presses his lips together and nods, whispering a barely audible _thank you_ before following Hosea to the saloon.

The older man spots his wife sitting beside the window closest to them, her eyes raising from her drink and widening once her husband comes into view. Hosea grins and winks, Bessie grinning in return and winking as well before they pass the window and push the doors to step inside. She stands beside the table to greet them within the busy saloon, arms open to wrap around both of her boys. She drags them close and the two bumble into each other, the three laughing heartily in their small circle.

She gives enough leeway to allow them breathing room, both receiving a kiss on the cheek before Arthur eases away to get himself a drink. The couple watches him go before turning their attention back to each other, all bright smiles and even brighter eyes.

"You look quite nice tonight, darling." he tells her as her hands slide down his arms.

"I thought I should dress to greet you both." Hosea smiles. "Though you smell like you've been herding for a couple days."

He instinctively moves to smell the collar of his slightly dusty shirt, though his nose was clogged with dirt and musk from the last weeks work.

"Is it that bad?" he asks as she steps back towards her chair.

"Only close up."

He slides her chair out for her and pushes her back into the table before seating himself on the other side. Her wedding band glimmers as she places her palm over his dusty knuckles, her thumb brushing over the fine blond hairs on his wrist.

"How was he?"

Hosea turns his gaze back to the crowd as a piano begins playing somewhere on the other side of the floor. He can see Arthur's hat trying to get closer to the bar.

"You mean the boy?" she nods. "A prick in the first half, but I made him apologize. Dutch teaches him everything at once then throws him in the world expecting him to understand it."

"We all do the same to our kids at one point or another. Teach them something then throw them into it. What did your mother do?"

"Most of that. But she- Bessie, she isn't-"

"She was ill in the mind, I know. But my parents have done the same to me and I was privileged enough to go to school."

Hosea leans against the table and nods, her hand sliding back as Arthur arrives with bottles under each arm and a balancing act of warm plates in his hands.

"I got us food!" he sets it all down with a loud clatter, spilling some potato against the table as he stumbles into his seat.

Bessie stops them before they can dig in, both watching her with expectant eyes until Hosea remembers and sets his silverware down. He gestures to Bessie and she speaks, turning herself to fully face Arthur in his chair.

"We haven't been able to do lots for your birthday these last couple of years so we wanted to make it up to you in some way." Arthur raises his eyebrow as Bessie reaches for something under the table, laughing gently. "Close your eyes."

"Close 'em?"

"That's right." Arthur huffs but smiles, shutting his eyes. "Are they closed tight?"

"Yeah, course."

"No, tighter."

"Oh, Bessie-" Hosea begins, but she's giggling and holding up her hand. Arthur clenches his eyes shut anyways with an excited laugh, long fingers drumming on the table.

"This is from both Hosea and myself," she takes Arthur's wrist and turns his hand so it faces palm up, setting the present within his grip.

He opens his eyes slowly as she leans back in her seat, a confused smile spreading across his face before he turns the small boxes over in his hands. They contain his own tobacco and pencils, plus a few sheets of rolling paper for him to use.

"These are so you stop taking my things." Hosea teases. Arthur grins sheepishly as he slides the box open with his thumb, peering inside and the new pencils awaiting him.

"Thank you..." he looks up at them, pushing the box back closed. "Both of you. You always seem to know exactly what I need."

The first year with Arthur they brought back those Delaware candies and bought him a jacket he saw in a window. The next was a new pair of boots he needed. Every birthday gift seemed to be things a person would need to live properly, but he was always grateful.

Something pokes Hosea's knee under the table, then a second time when he doesn't respond. Finally he reaches under and grabs it, discovering Bessie _had _picked up the book he wanted to give Arthur for his birthday. He leans back and analyzes the dark brown cover before setting it on the table.

"This too."

The boxes get set aside as the teen excitedly reaches for the book and lifts it, reading the cover.

"_Ivanhoe_. What's it about?"

"If you read it-"

"Its a wonderful story." Bessie cuts him off. She sends a look across the table. "Hosea bought it for you."

Arthur chuckles and flips through it, glancing at the pages.

"They're... small words."

"You can read it. I want to know how it is when you finish it. Maybe I'd want to read it."

A big grin spreads across the boys face. "Oh, so you've bought this just to steal it off me once you're done?"

"I'll get back at you for all my broken pencils one way or another."

He shares a laugh with the teen before Arthur sets it aside and thanks them again, then gently asking if they could eat. The couple talks business as Arthur shovels his meal into his mouth. Hosea's talking slows as he notices how fast the boy was going through his lamb and buttered potatoes, similar to the first time he'd watched the street urchin eat.

Bessie nudges her husband under the table and Arthur looks at her the same time, both gently reminded of their manners as they eat. Arthur finishes before them and fetches another bottle of beer, coming back and handing it to Bessie who had already taken the young mans previous bottle during the gift giving.

"Should we make a toast?" she asks.

They each grab their bottles, Hosea thinking then speaking.

"To Arthur," he raises his bottle and looks the boy in the eye. "Hardworking, intelligent, a smartass and sometimes a fool-" Arthur laughs. "-but a kind fool. You've grown a lot, mostly in a good direction and uh... well, cheers. To you and your good health."

"Cheers!" Bessie exclaims as their bottles clink together. Each of them tip their heads back and drink, finishing their first bottle together before Arthur's attention turns to a pretty face walking though the bar.

Hosea reaches to collect the gifts, their plates having been cleared away already.

"Go on," he tells him. "Don't get in trouble and meet us at the hotel when you're done."

Arthur beams and stands, taking an excited step away before faltering and coming back to Bessie. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and holds her tight, whispering something to her that her eyes soften at.

He pulls back so they can smile at one another, Arthur glancing at Hosea and giving a final thank you before he steps back and vanishes into the crowd.

The small town is surrendered to the Matthews couple that evening. They leave Arthurs gifts on his bed in the room next to theirs and stroll together with quiet conversation and soft smiles shared between them.

Its a short walk for a small town, the couple rounding back to the hotel so Hosea can finally wash up. She slips in with him, all smiles as she washes the dirt and the weight from his shoulders. She sits on his thighs in the water, Hosea's arms around her midsection as her hands rub the scented soap into his muscles. He shuts his eyes and gently lays his head on her shoulder, feeling her pause momentarily before her hands massage between his shoulder blades. He takes a long, comfortable breath in and opens his eyes to watch the candle flicker. His own fingers knead at her hips and the edges of her soft stomach, his lips pressing into her shoulder gently before he pushes his nose against her skin.

Her hand stop eventually and slide up the hair he needed to cut sooner or later. He feels her play with the longer strands growing at the back of his head as he slides her arms around her, Bessie shifting closer. She hurries to their room before him, then he follows and kicks his clothes off after locking the door.

Her eyes shine in their moonlight filled room when he presses kisses against her skin and receives burning love through her lips. Every touch jolts through his body, even something as simple as her palm brushing over the muscles in his arm. Those soft hands that guided him to his kinder side glide up the sides of his neck and into his hair, sliding back down to cup his face and drag him back down for another singeing kiss.

**Road to Chicago, 1874**

Hosea Matthews has been married for six years. Six prosperous and joyful years spent with the love of his life in a Delaware city, a city that was slowly choking him the longer he stayed tied to Loïc Boulanger's business.

He arrives home with no pretense, only true and unfiltered despair radiating from him as he enters the small apartment. He slips his jacket off and sets it aside, his hands raising to scrub at his face as he meanders blindly towards the corridor. Everything drags him down, the narrow walls of the apartment and low ceilings, the darkness waiting under the window that seems to always drain him of any positive emotion. His mind allows itself to wander to Loïc's cold stare as Hosea placed paperwork on his desk and retreated back to his own stiff seat. Then, to the dinner parties he had to attend under Loïc's gaze again, the watchful stare that made sure Hosea wouldn't have an outburst. Mainly, Loïc watched to make sure Matthews wouldn't steal anything, regularly making comments on his _different capabilities_, usually openly in front of business partners Bessie's cousins.

"Darling?"

He turns and looks down the dark corridor to find Bessie lingering in the light by the front door which she closes slowly. Hosea feels his lip quiver and tenses his jaw before he hears the sound of the lock turning.

"Are you alright?" that, and Bessie's gentle touch guiding him out of the dark corridor is all he needs to release a few tears with a shaky sigh.

"I'm so tired of this..." she seats him on their settee. "I don't know if I can work for your father anymore. I don't want you to have to con like I did, I don't miss it but sometimes it feels like it might be easier."

Bessie seats herself beside him and rests her hands on his knee as he meets her worried, grey eyes.

"Hosea, you know I would go anywhere for you. I would _do _anything for you. I'm glad you told me, because I'm getting tired of working at that school. The headmaster always looks at me from the end of his nose."

He lays his hand over hers and lets his head fall back against the wall.

"I'm worried it will end with you being sucked into that life." he squeezes her fingers as she tilts her head slightly. "Its dark, _filthy_. More than I've ever told you before..."

Bessie turns her gaze away and stares hard at the floor for several, very long seconds. He feels her wrap her fingers around her own before lifting her chin with a dedicated look in her eye.

"Tell me what you think we should do."

They discuss it for several days before Hosea resigns from the Boulanger business on short notice. He strips himself of the work jacket and hides the dress shoes under their bed before digging into the wardrobe to find his old clothes.

Tall, black boots with etching down the sides that vaguely looked like snakes baring fangs. The slacks that he'd arrived to Delaware in, a white shirt and dark vest following along before he slides the dark brown leather jacket over his arms and turns to the mirror.

He looks healthier than he'd last seen himself dressed in these clothes. His face fills out better, the shadows and ghosts had been kept at arms length for so long he was sure they'd capture him tonight in whatever bit of hell he would find himself in.

Hosea feels for the pockets and slips his fingers into the hidden one within, slipping out a small necklace he'd knicked when first entering Delaware. Beside it, an old pair of coarse gloves. They're scratched and worn, the tears stained with dark liquids from people he'd hurt. Hosea checks the wrist of the glove he pulls onto his right hand and finds a long, thin tear gliding into his palm, a memory of clawing his way from his fathers building long past.

He dresses himself with his ghosts and his demons before pulling his hat over his eyes to hide from the devil.

**Months later, 1874**

He'd left Bessie behind in Delaware with the promise that he'd bring their own future back to them. Something better and brighter than being trapped under the gaze of her parents, something _free_.

Now, he was cold and hungry. His socks did nothing to warm his feet in his boots and the gloves had been thrown into a fire in his rage one evening he remembered as half-drunk. The handkerchief he'd taken with himself to remember Bessie with only brought an onslaught of regret and exhaustion as he pushed his fingers into his pockets and felt its soft edge. His stomach growls, and he finds himself wishing he was seated beside his wife at one of those _awful _dinners her family's business partners hosted. At least then he'd only go home disgruntled, not angry as he sloshed through puddles of mud towards a small town.

No horse. The animal had died after snapping its foreleg and it left him wandering on his own feet.

_Shit_. he thinks. _What the hell am I doing?_

Everything in town is closed. Hosea stops beside a shattered window and squints at the dried blood on the glass shards, moving on when he notices hair and scalp stuck to the wooden frame. With only the rain to accompany him, he continues before coming across a group of law and civilians discussing what had happened, a bad murder in town.

Hosea ignores the pair of dark eyes following him as he asks questions as an innocent bystander, stepping out of the way when the crowd becomes violent. He steps back into the owner of the dark eyes and wraps his fingers around the dried meat and dollars in his grip, both stumbling aside and apologizing.

"You'll have to excuse me," Hosea says as he slips the jerky into his pocket and pats the other man down. "Its been a long day."

The other only shakes his head with a smile, bidding him farewell as they both turn away. Hosea stops several feet from the group and pats his jacket once he realizes the food he _did _have on him was now gone. He turns suddenly and watches the young man toss the small jar into the air, rounding the building and disappearing from sight. Hosea jogs away and slips between the buildings, pulling his pistol out and pointing it at the black hair.

The dark eyes lift in surprise once he notices the blond, his fingers in the pocket Hosea had slipped the jerky and cash from.

"Did you-" the young man starts. "Did you take my jerky?"

Hosea doesn't lower the gun. "You took my jar."

The young man pulls the small jar from his pocket and shakes it in a taunting manner towards the blond.

"This one?" he asks. "I'll give it back for my money. I worked hard for that cash."

Hosea just laughs. "I'm sure you stole that cash, too."

The young man shrugs, hands still held high. "I hadn't even noticed you took my things until you pointed your gun at me. You must've been doing it for a while..." he offers his hand, his index and thumb wrapped around the neck of the jar. "I'm Dutch."

Hosea snatches the jar from the young mans grip and slips it back into his coat.

"You want me to introduce myself? Get outta here. You're lucky I haven't shot you."

"I'm sure I am but you seem hungry, my friend. Real hungry. You can keep the cash, the meat, and your jar... Let me buy you a meal. Maybe then you'll introduce yourself."

Every thing in Hosea Matthews gut told him not to follow this man for a warm meal. But a warm meal was welcomed, and he ate it quickly as the other man studied him with amused eyes. Hosea scoops the final bit of stew into his mouth and wipes his lips, feeling the warmth settle within his stomach as those dark eyes follow his movements.

"You ready to tell me your name yet?"

The older man lifts his eyes and sits back, the stolen cash weighing heavy in his pocket.

"I appreciate you buyin' me a meal, truly I do." Hosea scoots the chair away from the table. "But-"

"Wait," the young man stops him from standing in desperation. "Just... hear me out." Hosea slumps back into his chair. "I was right about you being in the robbin' business for a while, right? Let's say I want to work with you, what would you say?"

The blond tilts an eyebrow. "You just met me..."

"Maybe so. But you're quick, and you're smart. I got a feelin' about you."

This kid couldn't even be twenty.

Hosea shows his amusement on his face in the form of a grin. "How old are you?"

"Nineteen. I've been alone for a few years now." A young runaway like Hosea. Something deep in him sympathizes as the younger man leans across the table and raps his knuckles against the surface. "There's a man I want to rob. One of those rich men who wears his wealth and throws it around. He's got plenty to share, but I'd need help getting his money."

Hosea crosses his arms, admittedly interested at the idea of a robbery of a rich man. This teen already knew how much he needed cash; he'd known Hosea took the money from his pocket and his poor fortune these last few months was obviously showing enough.

"You know where he keeps his cash?"

The rich man hides his money in a safe within his office on the second floor of an apartment building that survived the Chicago fire. The stairway leading up to the second floor is long and tall, Hosea following _Dutch _up the shadowed staircase to 2B, their destination.

Was it a deathwish to follow this younger man into Chicago? Or would this prove as fruitful as promised?

They cover their faces and Hosea picks the lock open, Dutch pushing through and raising his pistols to the businessman that looks up with shock on his face. Hosea kicks the door closed and crosses the floor to the safe, elbowing the man they were robbing in the cheek as he tries grabbing him. Their victim falls in the chair and whines as Dutch pushes the pistol closer, Hosea working on the safe.

He breaks it open and is greeted with stacks of green bills, his eyes widening before he reaches in and grabs at the stacks.

They do the same in 1880, robbing a man in Chicago, but this one fights back. Arthur grabs him around the middle and tackles him to the floor, beating him senseless as Dutch casually counts the money he'd previously stacked on the desk.

"Get him off of the man," Dutch orders Hosea quietly, eyes lifting only when Arthur curses the man under him. "We still need to know where the key is."

The blond slips his guns into their holsters and rounds the desk, watching as Arthur slams his fist into the mans cheekbone and eye socket. Theres a burning fire in his green eyes, a rage unleashed as he pounds his knuckles into his victims bones. Hosea grabs his wrist and stops the boy, Arthur looking up suddenly and jerking, stopping himself from attacking the older man as well.

He slips his other hand under Arthur's armpit and guides him off the body, looking down at the slack jaw and the whites of the eyes watching them. The structure of the face is wrong, beat in by knuckles bleeding, bones shattered inwards and a few teeth laying beside the mans limp head.

Hosea looks back at the boy and his knuckles, Arthur peering at the man on the floor with a shadow of guilt crossing his now relaxed face. It churns and twists into severe regret which he hides as soon as he can, looking away as Hosea wraps his fist and tugs him closer.

"Did I kill 'im?" Arthur whispers.

Hosea saw a shallow breath enter the victims mouth in the time he was staring at him.

"No." he whispers in return. "Did you want to?"

A shallow shake of the boys head, his eyes still refusing to meet Hosea's as Dutch drops a stack down on the table. He's a silhouette in the light flooding from the window, the sun's low place in the sky casting his tall shadow over the two of them.

Hosea tightens the haphazard bandage around the teens knuckles, letting go of his arm.

"Come here, son," Dutch says. Both watch him outstretch his arm, his palm facing Arthur. "Come count this money with me."

Immediately, Arthur becomes taller and broader, his shoulders pulled back and jaw a little firmer. He drops his arms at his sides, the knot bandana wrapped around his hand gripped in his palm as he steps away from Hosea and follows that wide shadow to Dutch's side where he begins counting the money for him.

The man on the floor begins groaning, rolling onto his side when Hosea turns to him. He's dragged himself a few feet across the floor, the wetness of his lost teeth causing them to stick to the side of his hand. Hosea lets him get as far as the door before he grabs him by the collar and drags him to the corner of the room. Spittle mixed with blood coats the mans chin, distant eyes trying to focus on the blond as Hosea stands and steps towards Arthur and Dutch.

A bang sounds on the door, then shouts follow.

"Who is that?" Dutch hisses.

Hosea has jumped to the center of the room in alarm, palm on the grip of his pistol. Its silent in the tense room as they listen to the movement on the other side of the door, shuffling and whispering before wood shatters and splinters across the room.

Hosea lifts his arms to cover his face and the sudden blast sends him sprawling against the floor. He feels stinging coming from his forearms and knows pieces of wood have lodged in his skin before he can open his eyes and see. Gunfire follows as it most often did, and someone drags him away from the door. Its Arthur pulling him to safety behind the vast desk, firing over the thick wood with an angered curl in his lip.

"Are you alright?" the teen shouts over the noise.

Hosea checks and sees blood dripping from thick splinters in his arms.

"I'm alright!" a bullet shatters a cup and sends the ceramic flying over their heads. "You?"

"I'll be fine if we can get out! I don't know where Dutch is!"

A quick scan of the room shows an empty window and a piece of black thread billowing against the frame. Hosea points, pulling one of his pistols from its holster.

"I think he got out-" Arthur grunts and drops to sit beside him, reloading his gun. "How much ammo?"

The boy holds up his weapon.

"This is all I got."

Hosea pants and nods, another bullet shattering the window before he points over the table and fires. Someone shouts in pain, then others yell and keep firing.

"Alright," Hosea nods. "I'll cover you as long as you get out that window."

Arthur turns his head to their exit before shaking his head.

"What about you?"

"I've gotten out of worse situations. You're gonna have to trust me, Arthur."

The teen stares, gaze softening from frustration to fear before Hosea pulls his other pistol from his belt and nods at him. Arthur tightens his jaw and readies himself on his toes, the blond taking a deep breath in. The older man rolls and stands, facing the room and firing at the open doorway where their victim cowers in the corner as shards of wood fly from the walls and door frame. He takes a step back as he unloads the chambers, bumping into the windowsill before stooping and letting himself fall out.

Its a further way down than he thought, Hosea landing on the roof shoulder first. It pops from its socket and he clasps his hand over it, Arthur jogging to him and pulling him to stand.


	7. Chapter Seven

"Was that a trap?" Arthur asks as he helps Hosea into his saddle, Dutch rounding them on The Count.

"I don't know." Dutch responds while watching Hosea wince in pain, gripping his shoulder as Arthur jogs to Boadicea and hops on her back. "But we need to get out of here."

"Real kind of you to wait for us." the oldest man hisses as he steers Silver Dollar from the alley they'd found Dutch hiding in. "You could've helped us."

Arthur whoops Boadicea into a gallop, the two older men trusting his lead from the small city.

"Tell me what you wanted me to do, Hosea!"

He narrows his eyes, pain erupting in his shoulder with every gallop against the ground.

"You left us to get shot, Dutch!"

"You wanted me to wait around to get shot myself? I was just keeping myself _safe. _They were firing at _me _anyways."

"Firing at you? You weren't even in the room when they started shooting! You hopped out that window the moment the lock got blown!"

"How would you know? You were closest to the door and facing it."

"That's right! I _was _closest and if Arthur hadn't grabbed me, I'd either be shot or being beaten right now. No thanks to you for our narrow escape, since you were gone from the rooftops by the time Arthur and I got out."

"Would you rather I got shot?"

"I feel like you'd prefer it if Arthur and I were arrested so you could blow another jail wall to try and stick it to the law!"

"You're being irrational, Hosea-"

"Fine. Fine, next time a shootout starts, I'll run out and leave you to it. _Then _we'll see how much you appreciate bein' abandoned."

"I didn't _abandon _either of you!"

"Fu-"

"Stop, both you!" Arthur shouts. Both of the older men look to the rider ahead of them, his eyes directed over his shoulder. "We're out of it, ain't we?"

"Exactly." Dutch answers.

The galloping of their horses fills the sudden silence between the three of them as they ride away from the distant sounds of police whistles. Hosea is no less irritated when they arrive back at camp, their new members Eli and Jasper setting their things aside to run to them.

"What happened?" Jasper asks. He's the oldest of the dark haired twins since their brother had died in custody.

Hosea slides from the saddle with a stiff grunt, brushing the worried hands from his arm as he passes the two twenty-year olds and wanders further into camp.

"The job simply didn't go as planned. Thats all." Dutch says.

"It was a lot of men for a job that _didn't go as planned._" Hosea says gruffly. Arthur has pulled his bandana off his face and is beginning to untie it as he watches the oldest man wander closer to the assortment of trees.

"Let it go, will you?"

Hosea bashes his shoulder against the bark and let's out a breath at the relief of pain now that his shoulder was back in its socket. He rolls the joint and sighs, glaring at Dutch as the girls hurry from the campfire.

"I can't let it go." Hosea mutters while Bessie takes his wrists to check his forearms dotted with lines of dried blood.

"I can hear you whispering over there."

"Yes, Dutch," he raises his voice suddenly, making Bessie jump. "I'm whispering about you."

"I wasn't the one who checked security for the building."

"What do you-"

"It was my fault." Arthur says tiredly as he passes the money off to Eli. "I knew there was security, and I knew it was a risk. But I also knew there would be a big payoff at the end."

Hosea feels anger flare within him but it dies down, making room for him to only calmly nod.

"That was a dumb idea." he says in a neutral tone. The teen only nods, his head hanging down.

"You mean to tell me you _knew _how many men would be gunning for us on the other side of that door?" Dutch speaks in a slow, accusatory tone. "You could've gotten us killed."

Arthur nods, raising his hands like he was trying to keep a growling dog at bay. "I know, I know. It was... stupid."

"That was _beyond _stupid."

Dutch scoffs and sighs, pulling his bandana off of his face and throwing it to the ground. Susan sends a scalding look Arthur's way while the twins relieve everyone of their stolen money and carry it into camp to be counted. The dark haired man continues muttering about it while Bessie treats her boys and scolds them for their foolishness. Hosea can't stay mad at Arthur, no matter how dumb his decision was. He knew about the security and should have told them, or at least deployed Eli and Jasper to guard the door. Hell, they should've taken the whole small gang for the amount of bullets fired through the door, destroying those fine panes of glass above their heads. But, Arthur was young and he was bold. Naive, but bold. Hosea already knew everything the boy did was to appease Dutch's ever-burning hunger for money, but also realized it was a step too far.

"There's easier ways to make a buck." he tells the teen quietly as they stroll into camp. He wouldn't have had to snap and beat that man senseless on the office floor, either.

Arthur nods, eyes guilty.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I'll forgive you. But don't pull it again. We might not survive next time."

"Might not survive?" Dutch has overheard their conversation and spits out a laugh. "You gotta get better at plannin', son, 'cause we would've all died."

Arthur sends a look for help, but Hosea has taken his wife's hand to guide her away. He knew the teen understood what he had done, but a bit of scolding from Dutch couldn't hurt him, especially since Dutch's words always knocked a little bit more sense and conviction into him.

Bessie grows stiff and Hosea tugs her lightly, whispering from the side of his mouth.

"Leave 'im."

"Hosea-"

"Dutch will get it through to him better. Come on."

She sighs heavily through her nose and follows Hosea from the teen with heavy feet. The arguing continues as the Bessie wrangles the twins and makes them sit down to help cook dinner, a simple enough job of rubbing some seasoning into meat and slapping it over a fire. Even Susan gets her word in on Arthur's mistake, but her comment comes out in concern for his own life, not just everyone else.

"I can't believe you didn't tell us about security." Dutch has taken it further, dragging it into dusk as they eat the seasoned chicken around the fire together. He even tried barring Arthur from a meal before the Matthews glared at him and convinced him to let the boy eat.

"Dutch, I get it-"

"Do you? Really? We all had to jump out of a window to live."

Arthur furrows his brows. "Yeah. I _do_. You ain't better. You hopped out the window first."

"By the fault _you _made."

Hosea is busy stitching his own wound as the argument continues, Arthur standing and dropping his plate before Dutch stands and rushes him. The boy falters as Dutch begins yelling, Arthur stumbling back in shock. Susan stands and follows, grabbing Dutch by the bicep only to be pushed away.

"All I said was I got it!" Arthur shouts in return. Jasper has taken his brothers arm and retreated to their bedrolls, out of the line of fire while Bessie stands as well.

"You prove to me you understand what you did!" Dutch roars.

Hosea is a few feet behind his wife as she jogs to the boy and puts herself between he and Dutch. 

"You stop it this instant!" she demands.

Dutch squares his shoulders and steps closer, his voice lowered so he murmur something as Hosea reaches his side and pushes the dark haired man back by his chest. Dutch leans back into him and the blond keeps his palm firmly on the others ribs, forcing the dark eyed glare to shift away from Arthur and Bessie. He knew that Dutch, if properly provoked, could resort to violence. He especially didn't like when someone stood up for themselves, and Arthur had done just that, both literally and figuratively.

"Stand down, Dutch." he leans further into Dutch's space, his hand unwavering from the firm bone beneath his hand. He can feel the other mans chest heave as he drags in a dramatic breath, dark eyes momentarily shooting over his shoulder towards Arthur, no doubt still standing behind Bessie.

Dutch takes a begrudging step back and allows for Hosea's hand to fall, his eyes never leaving the people standing behind him. The younger man only shifts his gaze when he takes couple steps back, his eyes meeting Hosea's brown ones as he turns away and marches to Susan. She offers no consolidation, her arms crossed firmly across her chest while her green eyes watch him march from the Matthews couple. He brushes past her in a radiating anger, head lifting to the twins who lean away and light their cigarettes between them.

Hosea finds himself releasing the tension that had built up in his back, only looking away from Dutch once the man shoves his tent flap open and disappears inside. The blond turns and looks at the other two, Bessie stepping out of the way of Arthur who glances between them with concern.

"I didn't know he'd explode like that." Hosea admits in a quiet tone.

Arthur pulls at the front of his shirt quickly and shrugs his shoulders, trying to act as if he wasn't obviously shaken up. He looks up at Bessie when she lays her hand on his arm and guides him away, sending a look to Hosea that _screams _they would be having a talk later.

-

Dutch introduces another new face. This one is clean and close shaven with shimmering blue eyes filled with intelligence and intellect, beyond their obviously youthful years. This newcomer has swept back, short cut, black hair and a pressed shirt dressing his shoulders, a blue cravat around his throat.

"Hosea, meet Josiah Trelawny."

Another young man dragged into their workload.

Arthur grows tense at Hosea's side as they introduce themselves to Trelawny, a singing accent piercing the background noises of the busy bar anytime the new one speaks. They seat themselves at the table, Arthur bringing a chair from another and huffing as he sits down. Trelawny plays with a deck of cards and captures Arthur's attention, sliding it over to the other young man.

"Josiah here is something of a magician." Dutch tells them.

Hosea turns his head to the black haired boy and crosses his arms, waiting as Josiah points towards the blue deck and taps it.

"Pick a card." he tells Arthur. The other teen rolls his eyes but straightens and clears his throat when he looks at Dutch, his fingers pulling one from the middle of the deck. "Don't show me!" Josiah blocks his eyes and winks to Hosea, telling Arthur to memorize his card.

Trelawny sticks it back into the deck and shuffles, letting the rest of the table shuffle as well before plucking the top card away and turning it around to Arthur.

"Is this it?"

Green eyes grow wide and Arthur nods in astonishment. Proud, Josiah sets the card on the table and watches with glowing eyes as the other young man lifts it into the air.

"How'd you do that?" Arthur breathes.

"That's the point of magic," Trelawny carefully slips the card from Arthur's fingers, pushing it into the deck. "You don't reveal your tricks."

"Your parlor tricks are nice, Trelawny," Hosea speaks. "But you must know what we are."

"Oh yes! I know Dutch van der Linde and Hosea Matthews quite well! Two robbers and thieves on the run from the East with a pretty bounty on your heads-" he raises his palm as Arthur shifts. "-but I don't care for trying to make you magically appear in a bounty wagon or some Philadelphia jail cell."

Dutch leans closer to the blond and speaks lowly. "Josiah can do more than pretty card tricks and illusions."

Trelawny leans back in his chair to rifle in his pocket. "I'll prove it to you," Dutch's rings are dropped onto the table beside the pencil Arthur carried with him. A few more knick knacks; a womans personal item, a bracelet, a photograph of a dog, and finally, several gold nuggets.

The dark haired man reaches for his rings and drags them back across the table to slip onto his fingers. Josiah slides the pencil back to Arthur and offers the dog picture to Hosea, who declines in amusement. He instead pokes at the small gold nuggets laid out in front of them as Dutch speaks.

"See, Hosea?"

The older man nods, his mouth arched in a small smile. "I see gold, and I see he's managed to outsmart you, Dutch."

"Ohho, not yet." Arthur slips the pencil into his ripped vest's pocket and leans over to analyze the gold in front of him. "Josiah also promises good leads, as long as we cut him part of the share. Right?"

The young man nods, a muscle tensing in his jaw as his eyes flicker between the others at the table. "I can support myself for most of the time, but all I ask in return of good leads is some money."

"Only if they're good." Hosea points to the gold nuggets. "How much of a share?"

Josiah turns his gaze to the table and rolls his neck, leaning forth to rest his nail on the gold as he deliberates. Soon, he slides a few pieces his own way.

"Not much. You'd be doing all the grunt work. I'd ask for... a small percentage, given I showed you where the grunt work would take place. But if _I _do most of the work-" Josiah cups his hand around three more pieces and slides them his way, leaving the table with two. "-then I should receive more. And I _will_ receive more."

Josiah talks like he's in charge, and Hosea almost likes him for it. His blue eyes lift again and meet the oldest man's gaze, ignoring Dutch's audible confirmation and waiting for something to give way in the blonds stare. He could see a downside to bringing Josiah with them; another bedroll around the campfire that wouldn't much get along with Eli and Jasper. The upside was Josiah's agility and obvious respect showing for Hosea. Dutch must have talked a storm about both he and Arthur before they arrived, and Josiah seemed to trust his word enough not to take anything from Hosea's pockets. Trelawny risked his life managing to sneak the gold rings off of Dutch's fingers, and he knew his friend would both praise and complain about Josiah's abilities for the next couple of weeks.

So Hosea nods gently and flicks the end of one of the nuggets, watching Arthur catch it before it could fly off the table.

"Are you coming back to camp with us?" he asks.

"Josiah won't be staying with us often-" Odd. Dutch resented he and Bessie for being gone for two months and occasionally held it over their heads a full three years later. "-only when he needs to."

The young man with blue eyes slips the nuggets back into his pocket and leaves the final one on the table while Arthur grips the one he'd caught within his palm.

"I've found I work quite well on my own, but it wouldn't hurt to offer my services to such organized criminals as yourselves."

Everyone stands from the table while Hosea nods.

"We ain't very organized."

Dutch bids Josiah farewell, subconsciously tightening his fingers into a fist to secure his rings as Arthur shakes Josiah's hand again and obediently follows Van Der Linde out of the bar. Hosea watches them go, sensing the young man was growing tense before he turns to him and holds out his hand.

"Give me Arthur's money."

Josiah laughs. "I didn't-"

"You're a good actor, kid, but I saw you stuffing it into your pocket." the other holds his own for a minute before grumpily handing the cash over. Hosea pockets it and smacks Josiah on the shoulder, stepping away.

"Can I at least have the gold you took off of me when we sat down?" he calls.

Hosea pushes the bar door open and shakes his head, stuffing his hands into his pocket to find Josiah had managed to take it back anyways.

\--

**Summer, 1883**

They're in the Idaho territory, Hosea wandering the shore of the Coeur d’Alene River to salvage the cool air that wafts off the water. They've arrived from the South after hearing word of Prichard striking gold in the water. Arthur and the twins have been armed and guarding prospectors willing to pay for protection on the river, the railroad fueling the miners migration North in hopes of striking it rich.

Jasper, Eli and Arthur got drunk for Arthur's twentieth birthday and Josiah went as far as bringing them something new to bite, a potential con on the Northern railroad within the Washington territory. Though the trains primarily shipped cattle and people, Trelawny had a hint on one of the passenger cars. A possible table of high-end business tycoons gambling their shares of oil fields, gold and silver mines, no doubt smoking cigars worth more than their lives and flicking ash into diamond ashtrays.

Hosea had already done his scouting of the railroad and the people involved. Susan double-checked security, Bessie triple checked it with a ticket on the train. Dutch wanted to hit it full force, guns blazing with the whole calvary behind him. That was a deathwish, and after several hours of talking they convinced him to try a smoother way.

"We can't shoot through every thing and hope to come out the other end alive." Hosea had told him. "There's too many guards. And the police would be all over it the second we get to a station."

After further deliberation, Dutch settled on allowing Arthur to join Hosea and Trelawny in the train cars. Now they only waited for the date and Trelawny to slip them their tickets.

The miners are gathered in a single area together when Hosea arrives back to the main campsite, someone playing a harmonica as he spots Jasper and Arthur sharing a bottle of beer. Eli is dancing with a miner's child as the harmonica hums louder, the young man lifting the child off its feet and twirling them. He hears them both giggle as he passes, offering a smile in the corner of Eli's vision.

Eli sets the kid back down as Hosea approaches the other two, Jasper finishing off the bottle as Arthur pushes himself to stand, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"We leavin'?" Arthur asks.

Hosea nods slowly, his eyes wandering to the mine foreman as the boys collect their things scattered around the campsite.

"You get your pay?" the older man asks.

The twins together have fifty dollars. Arthur has only a few bucks more that he stuffs in his pocket as they walk to their horses. Jasper teases his brother about his softness for kids as they ride from the camp, leaving with farewells from miners and waves from cautious little kids. Its a long ride down the Coeur d’Alene, each of them breathing in the river air despite the few bugs trying to bite at them. Silver Dollar leads the small group as they cross the gorgeous shallow water.

"So, when we hittin' the gamblers on the train?" Eli asks from the back.

Arthur responds for Hosea. "Whenever Josiah gets back to us. Though I don't put much faith in 'im."

"You like him really, Arthur." Jasper teases from his brothers side. "A hell of a lot more than you like us."

"Ha... I suppose that's cause I don't got to sleep next to him and listen to 'im snore."

"What you talkin' about? Boy, you gots your own tent!" The twins share a raucous laugh as they breach the other shore. "You ain't got to sleep next to us anyhow."

"Maybe not, but I gotta listen to ya!"

"We don't get a word in when Josiah's around."

"We don't get a word in with Dutch, neither." All three of the boys laugh, and Hosea can't help but join them.

Josiah comes to them that next week with the train tickets and fake alias'. Their target was a tycoon named Lloyd Closett who had recently staked a claim in silver mines, his interest primarily in gambling for the most part. This same man also couldn't miss the opening of an envelope, and was scheduled to view the hammering of the golden spike, a celebration of the completion of the Northen Railroad. The driving of the final spike was an event to see, though Hosea bet that most of the crowd would be passing cowboys in search of entertainment.

"Josiah!" Arthur greets the other young man.

"Hello, everyone! How are you, Arthur?" he sidles up to him with his blue eyes shining mischeviously. Its enough for Arthur to shift away, his own grin on his face.

"Your job got me into this suit. But other than that, I'm alright."

"Well, at least Hosea taught you to wear a suit!" Josiah turns his gaze to the twins struggling to adjust their collars and look even half presentable. "It doesn't seem that the twins have..."

Arthur chuckles and it causes Josiah's lips to turn upwards into a smile before he slips a handkerchief from his pocket.

"Workin' on a new trick?"

Josiah nods as the others continue getting ready, Hosea finishing the knot on his tie as he watches Trelawny picks up one of Eli's stolen stopwatches. Eli pauses at the others outstretched hand and watches in mixed fascination as Josiah sets the handkerchief over the watch and snaps his fingers. He pulls the cloth away to reveal an empty palm, the twins clapping as Arthur's smile widens.

"That was good." Jasper says. "Can we have it back?"

The blue eyed man folds and sticks the handkerchief back into his pocket with a shake of his head. "Damned if I know how to get it back."

Arthur snorts loudly before blocking Eli and Jaspers angered path to the young magician. Josiah steps away calmly as all six feet and one inch of Arthur pushes them back and continues laughing. Dutch's commands don't reach them, but once Susan storms across camp they quiet down and use Arthur as a human shield.

"You listen to Dutch!" she orders. The twins nod from behind Arthur, her glare passing him absently as she tries getting ahold of Jasper. "Was it you who started it?"

Her fingers curl into his sleeve and the young man points desperately towards Josiah now reading the spines of Hosea's books. He glances up momentarily but grows stiff when Susan's hard green eyes meet his. She quickly turns back to the other young men, Arthur having slipped from Eli's grasp to escape.

"And how's that?" she asks.

Susan could be cold when she wanted to. While Arthur was used to Bessie's warmer ways of counseling and scolding, Susan dealt her hand with far more ferocity. Which was fair, given that at twenty she was forced into an unsteady relationship with a wild young boy. But that colder motherly role had only become harsher the more time went on, a direct result of the faltering romance and attention between she and Dutch. Eli and Jasper were her targets most of the time. Arthur received a cold back hand once or twice but was quickly put in her place by Bessie. Bessie could calm a raging storm if she needed to, and Hosea wouldn't be surprised if she'd managed to clear a few rainclouds on the trail these past few years. But lately, Susan was more than a windy storm. She was hail and thunder sent down by an angry God ordering for repentance of His people.

Bessie intervenes calmly with a joke that gets the twins out of Grimshaws grasp and even has her nodding. Josiah compliments their choice of books before the gang settles around the campfire, Eli and Jasper hiding beside Dutch as Susan boils water over the fire.

"So," Josiah wipes some dust from his pants as they get settled. "Do we _actually _have a plan? Or have you all decided on shooting your guns at the first sign of danger?"

"We've got one..." Dutch's eyes wander to Hosea adjacent to him at the fire.

The blond adjusts his tie and shifts forward, his hands folded in front of himself.

"Josiah, Arthur and myself will be acting as mine owners searching for a stake. Through Josiah's coercion," Josiah smiles. "We'll be seated at the table closest to the gamblers. Rosser should be drunk enough by then that when Susan and Bessie pass and begin talking with him he'll be more than willing to talk about where his money is and how we use the key."

"What about Dutch and the twins?" Arthur asks abruptly.

"They'll wait in the second train car, closest to the back," he meets the dark eyed gaze for a few seconds before looking away. "You three will only act if asked to. That means keeping your guns holstered and yourselves primarily _unseen_. Lay low. Be quiet. But don't be afraid to make a few connections if they're worth anything. Rosser should have a lot of money on this train, but he'll be the only one with the key to his safe."

The others nod gently.

"Oh, and make sure you act like you don't know us. We're three separate groups of people in this, just strangers passing through. When we get the key and Rosser takes us to his safe, then we can act. Everyone understand?"

There's a few nods of approval before Josiah claps his hands to get them moving.

Bessie and Susan go on ahead of them, pretending to be two dames from the growing city of Saint Denis, while Josiah hires a carriage to take the three of them to the station. Dutch. Jasper, and Eli will follow on horseback once they're out of sight.

Hosea gives a short salute as he climbs into the carriage and watches as Dutch returns it from The Count. He settles back into the seat as the driver closes the door, Arthur and Josiah complaining to each other about how much space each of them had.

"I thought I remembered you telling me once you had to sleep in a garden pot for warmth." Josiah comments.

Arthur snorts, elbowing him lightly. "Don't mean I want to sit so close to you."

Hosea allows for the space of time of the ride to become more of the _jewelry__ man _he was supposed to be. Diamonds, silver, gold and other riches were supposed to be his forté. He didn't know much about them other than they were nice to steal and had a nice shine to them in the sun. Josiah and Arthur bicker most of the way, Hosea simply laying his finger against his lips to quiet them. They ease into silence for the last few minutes of carriage ride, the oldest man shutting his eyes and thinking back to his life in Delaware when he and Bessie had a home and took regular rides in these to keep up appearances for her family's sake.

Hosea sees she and Susan being seated in the second train carriage when they arrive. He's gazing through the windows at her as Josiah redeems the tickets, watching as her head turns slightly and her grey eyes meet his. She covers her smile with her napkin as Hosea grins, Josiah's voice pulling him away from the window.

"My uncle here will be joining us." the clerk stares from between the bars, checking the tickets again and glancing to Hosea's well-tailored suit before handing the paper over.

"Go on ahead."

Arthur takes his ticket and pushes open the door just as Eli enters the station with a loud Jasper at his side. The door shuts too quickly for any of them to hear Dutch, the trio walking towards the train to climb aboard. They're directed to the first train car, Hosea slipping through the door to be hit with a wall of cigarette smoke and calm piano music. The sun has already set, bathing the outside of the train in dark blue as the orange within keeps them illuminated. They're guided past the bar to their table, Hosea sitting down proudly as Josiah stops to get them drinks and Arthur slowly seats himself. Both of them can see the card game going on at the next table, but Rosser hadn't yet arrived.

"Why can't we just rob the rest of 'em?" Arthur whispers. "We've taken whole trains of guards before, it won't be nothin' new."

"Because, as Josiah and I have said before, you can't earn money from every job by killing the guards and riding away. Some thought process must go into what you are doing. Now sit up straight. We sell jewels, not stolen wagons or gold teeth."

Arthur slowly adjusts his posture, his eyes roaming over the polished wooden table as Josiah arrives with glasses of wine.

"I see that Rosser hasn't arrived yet." Josiah mutters. Arthur gives a gentle chuckle as Hosea shakes his head. "Patience, though. I'm sure he'll turn up soon."

The train leaves the station with no sign from Rosser. There's no sign of the empty chair at the table being filled by a newcomer, either, even half an hour into the trip. Hosea has pushed any new drink coming Arthur's way _back _to the bartender, or at least given it to a man or two around them. They've become accompanied with other rich families and tycoons, but none are Rosser or the potential gold hiding in his safe.

An hour passes, then Josiah kicks Hosea beneath the table and quickly apologizes. The older man takes a long sip of alcohol as Arthur jolts and glares across the table, the oldest turning his head at Josiah's subtle pointing. Bessie has entered the traincar with her arm hooked around Dutch's and another man's, alarm in her eyes. Hosea sets his empty glass down as Arthur pretends to turn and deliver the glasses back to the bartender, obviously stiffening at the sight of Dutch with a cigar in his mouth.

Hosea meets his friend's eyes and sees him wink before the three of them brush past their table.

"Rosser, you are a funny man." Van Der Linde states.

That was the target. Rosser was already drunk and slurring his words, only walking because Bessie was holding him up while Dutch schmoozed him from her other side. She dumps Rosser into a chair and shivers before parting from Dutch's side, bidding them farewell as she turned away and approached Hosea's table. She flashes him a bronze key and he lets her leave the train car before directing Josiah to keep an eye on Dutch and Rosser.

"Come with me, Arthur." the other young man stands almost immediately, Josiah standing with them.

"But, Hosea-"

Arthur's the one to raise his hand and stop him.

"If Dutch does somethin' stupid, just get Susan."

The blue-eyed man sits hesitantly and runs his his hands over his glass of whisky as the other two turn away, following Bessie into the second train car. 


	8. Chapter Eight

The second train car doubles as the dining car, members of high society sitting down to eat well staged meals of expensive salmon and steaks, Arthur very obviously eyeing a few plates of mutton as they follow Bessie at a distance. 

Hosea pulls the younger man towards one of the tables and sits him down, watching as Jasper sips wine and makes a face after the alcohol hits his tongue. Eli has vacated his seat at their table and has instead approached Bessie at the far end of the train car where she is attempting to convince the guard to let her cross into the third car. 

Eli has begun to get heated, stumbling slightly into the guard who gently pushes the boy back to give himself space. Bessie is attempting to calm them both, refined heads turning to the growing ruckus as Jasper continues to calmly try different glasses of alcohol. Hosea leaves Arthur at the table and slips past one of the servants, laying his hand over Eli's shoulder once he arrives. 

"And who are you-?" the young man turns and swats his hand off, sticking his finger into the older man's chest in an accusatory manner. 

"Calm down, son-" 

"I was trying to help this here lady!" 

Hosea pushes Eli's hand off of his chest in fake attempts to calm him, though the other continues stepping into his space and yells when the guard attempts to interrupt them. Eli turns to Hosea with a shallow grin, winking as he steps into a defensive stance.

The older man knocks him on his ass and hisses in pain at the harsh connection of knuckle on bone. A cheer rises through the train car as Bessie's hand goes over her mouth, disdain faked as he recognizes her grin beneath her glove. The guard moves a wobbly Eli back to his table and Hosea pulls the train car door open, helping his wife across the platforms. 

The third car is primarily empty and filled with ripped coats and fringed dresses. There's children sleeping on the car in their parents arms, men sitting with their arms crossed over their chests and shining spurs on the back of their boots. The outlaw car: the lesser known and fortunate sit within, not staring too long at the couple as they quickly pass through to the door at the end of the long pathway. 

Bessie explains to the two guards waiting in the baggage compartment about the desperate need to get her friends medicine from his safe. Flashing the key and feigning desperation, she motions to Hosea who wobbles on his feet as the train takes a rounded corner, more guards joining at the sound of a woman's voice. She brings on the fake tears, an act used often enough but its effective and grants them entry to the baggage cars. Hosea trails behind the pair of guards as they lead he and Bessie directly to the safe, telling them to be quick about it as they resume their positions at the back end of the train. He crouches beside the safe with her as she tries the key, the lock springing open. 

"What happened?" he whispers as the guards continue a conversation. 

"Dutch spotted Rosser and got excited. Susan and I knew he wouldn't be able to keep to himself." she pulls the door open and peers inside, both of them checking the security on either side before slipping the cash into their pockets, Bessie stashing a bale under her hat. "I'll explain more later." 

She grabs a blue, glass bottle from within the safe as Hosea continues emptying it of money. He grabs the small bags within and weighs them in either hand, passing it to his wife who pulls the knot in the ribbon and empties the contents into her glove. It was filled with small jewels, shining in the dim light surrounding them. Hosea empties the other into his pocket and grabs the final stack of money, standing as his wife shuts the safe and joins him. 

"For you two-" Hosea splits the cash in his hand between the two guards. "Keep quiet about this, and I'll make sure more comes your way." 

The guards smile and thank him, going as far as escorting the couple back to the door of the second train car. Bessie pokes him and points to the window of the door, the guards hurrying through the eruption of noise within. Jasper continues drinking, but Arthur has dragged Josiah and Eli out of the way. Rosser is shouting about something with Dutch at his side, Susan too busy sharing a glass of whisky with Jasper to care. Rosser continues howling his frustrations out, slurring on about losing his bets as Dutch spots the couple and winks. 

Bessie takes her husbands arm and allows him to maneuver them both around the chaos, Hosea stopping beside Trelawny and Morgan as he lets go of her arm. 

"Rosser is quite frustrated about having lost." The blue eyed man states and scratches at a mole on his cheek. "Though Dutch won it all from him." 

"Dutch can't tell the difference between a Jack and a King, how'd he manage that?" the blond asks. 

Josiah only shrugs, Arthur reaching behind Hosea suddenly to block a flying glass. The oldest man turns and presses himself against the bar as the guards escort Rosser from the dining area, dragging the drunken man by his arms as he tiredly kicks, giving in and passing out while Bessie passes the blue vial to the third guard. 

Arthur sits back down at the table and scoots over to give Hosea room, Josiah seating himself on the opposite side. Each of them raise their menus and pretend to read, the oldest watching over the top of his menu as Bessie sits back at her table with Susan and slips something the younger womans way. Dutch meets Hosea's brown eyes and raises his eyebrows in question, the blond giving a single nod to which the younger lights a match and begins smoking his cigar. 

\-- 

"Why couldn't you have just left Rosser alone?" Susan is arguing with Dutch on the way back to camp. 

They've each exited the train at separate stops with the appropriate group, meeting together at the head of the Coeur d'Alene to share what they had gotten. Arthur helps Eli drag his drunk brother to the horses as Susan's stern voice interrupts the short reunions, Bessie carefully checking within her glove to make sure the jewels were still there. 

"You made us draw attention to ourselves!" she continues loudly. "What if we all got recognized?" 

"Be quiet." Dutch groans. "It worked out. Again."

Hosea swings his leg over the saddle and hoists Bessie onto Silver Dollar's back. 

"She's not wrong. The whole point of this robbery was to be separated into groups and only cross paths if we had to." 

"We still got the money. And more, it seems." Dutch points out Bessie analyzing a shining jewel on Silver Dollars back. She quickly slips it back into her glove and wraps her arms around Hosea's waist. "You need to trust me, both of you. I knew what I was doing." 

"Well maybe I thought it would have been more use had you told us about your change of plans before runnin' off." Susan reaches to climb onto The Count, but Dutch spurs the horse on and only stops a few feet away.

"Dutch-" Hosea begins. 

"We got the money. We got jewels, gold, and some good connections. I ain't stayin' around to listen to you complain with so much cash in our pockets. Now come on," he turns The Count around to head for camp. "We're going home."

Arthur lets Susan ride with him on Boadecia on the way back, Eli keeping his eye on his brother before his twin pukes a mile from camp. Once they arrive back, Jasper collapses to sleep the alcohol off as most of the others collect themselves around a makeshift table, stacking the money and jewels together. Bessie removes her glove with care, hat abandoned as Josiah pulls a chair up and watches as she carefully pours her glove out onto the table. 

A stream of green jewels pour onto the wood, Josiah and Eli both reaching to cup their hands and block them from pouring off the sides of the table, eyes widening and mouths grinning. She shakes her glove gently and watches as the final jewel bounces and lands in Josiah's palm, Arthur having meandered from Dutch with eyes full of awe.

"Wow." he breathes, hand outstretched to pinch one from Josiah. "He really had all this in one safe?" 

Trelawny happily lays the jewels on the table and smiles softly at them. "Bad for him, and quite good for us." 

Arthur hums and sets the jewel back down, straightening his back. 

"So, how do you wanna split this, Hosea?" the younger man asks. The blond has pulled up a crate to sit on, Bessie exiting to change into more comfortable clothing. 

"The jewels we should appraise and sell separately." he says. "Too many in one place will seem suspicious. Dutch should be here and help," he turns to look at his friends tent, watching as the dark haired man storms out with an angered Susan behind him. 

Each man at the table turns their attention back to the jewels while Grimshaw stomps after him, both spewing colorful insults before they hear the sound of The Count huffing. 

"Arthur! Hosea!" they look up. "Join me for a drink in town to celebrate." 

The older man shakes it off, watching as the green eyed man takes a hesitant step forth. 

"We gotta count the money, Dutch." 

"Drink first! Come on, boys." Arthur shuffles before shaking his head and sitting down, Hosea watching Dutch's dark eyes widen slightly before he turns his attention to Eli and Josiah. 

The other two also decline, Eli stating he needed to take care of his brother while Trelawny quietly turned back to the jewels. Dutch's eyebrows furrow before he turns away, riding The Count out of sight. 

\--

Several weeks later and Josiah has vanished again, this time taking a portion of their newfound fortune to be appraised by a high bidder further East. They'd gotten a good amount of money for small portions throughout their travelling towards the South in hopes of reaching Mexico. Arthur had become greatly despaired when they left, silent for most of the trip as he read and re-read the same letter that hadn't been disclosed to the rest of the group. 

"Who's Mary?" Jasper asks loudly. Arthur is quick to storm from Dutch's side, trying to grab the letter from the other man who turns away. "Just tell me who Mary is." 

"None of your business. Now give it back!" 

The other twin enlists himself into the fight and steals the letter from his brother before Arthur can get a good hold on Jasper. Eli hops around him, reading aloud the contents of a letter obviously from someone who loved him. The younger twin stops and falters over several of the words, giving enough time for Arthur to grab it and smack Eli on the back of the head. 

Arthur folds it back up and angrily turns away, fuming as he stomps to his bedroll to grab a box of ammo before leaving. Hosea watches the cloud of dust that rises into the air after Boadecia, Eli and Jasper laughing to themselves as they wander back to each other. 

Hosea only starts to get worried about Arthur a few hours after dark when the younger man hadn't arrived to camp yet. He saddles up Silver Dollar and follows Boadicea's tracks to the railway line, then past the dried up pond outside of the local town where the known drunks lay together and sing. He finds Arthur under a great big oak tree, alone and watching the prairie in front of him. Hosea slips from his horses saddle and pets Silver Dollars neck before carefully approaching the side of the tree. 

The singing continues as a soft hum behind them as Hosea makes his presence known and breaks a stick beneath his boot. Arthur turns his head partially but soon looks back at the horizon and at the stars. The older man leans against the bark and hooks his thumb into his gunbelt, watching the stiff shoulder of the younger man in silence until Arthur knits his eyebrows and speaks. 

"Why'd you follow me?" 

Hosea watches the angered eyes that refuse to look up at his face. "You know why." Gently, he shifts his foot and crosses it over his ankle while the other huffs. 

"Maybe I wanted to be left alone." The older man only nods and hums. "I don't want your company, Hosea. Leave me alone." 

The blond feels his jaw inadvertently tense before shifting gently and stepping back. 

"I let you go off alone because you're not a kid anymore. I know damn well you can handle yourself, but you also know what you can be like... I don't want to come into town tomorrow morning and find you've gotten yourself arrested. Eli and Jasper are pricks, I know that, you know that. Hell, Bessie knows that. But stoopin' to their level and takin' your anger out on others, it won't get you far." Arthur responds with stiff silence as Hosea pushes off the tree. "I'll leave you be." 

"No." He stops himself, slowly hooking his other thumb into his gunbelt as Arthur shifts and motions to the spot beside himself. "S'alright..." 

The older man balances himself on the thick roots protruding from the ground, leaning far back so his shoulders brush the bark of the tree once again. Crickets, the quiet singing, and the sound of Arthur's sketching melts into a soft melody of the night while Hosea stares into the sky. The sound of pencil against paper abruptly stops and the blond turns his attention downwards after Arthur elbows his knee. 

"This is her." 

The blond crouches and takes the sheet of paper gently, finding Arthur has used the envelope the letter arrived in as his drawing pad. He's avoided the remnants of the red wax seal and has sketched a darling looking girl on the back. 

"This is Mary?" Hosea asks. 

Arthur gives a slow nod as the older man hands the envelope back. "Mary Gillis... she and her family was just visitin' the Idaho territory. They're from Kansas."

"Kansas? Now, whats in Kansas?" 

Arthur shrugs, a smile daring to cross his face. "Other than a pretty girl, I don't know." 

The older man chuckles gently and braces himself against the tree to slip his legs out from under himself. He sits down, pushing his leg between the roots as he removes his hat and lays his head against the tree. 

"You've been in love with her for a while." he comments. 

"Oh, I don't know if it's love-" 

"All those dreamy looks you've been having, disappearing for a while... I saw her with you once in town, too." 

"You saw us?" 

"Sure... I didn't tell the others. I knew it'd come out eventually. But it took a lot longer than I thought it would." 

Arthur shifts and sets the envelope aside. 

"She don't want me meetin' her father... Apparently, he's a big man with an even bigger title back in Kansas. And what am I? Just an outlaw."

"Well, you don't have to be an outlaw forever." But the difference in class would be a hurdle the young couple would have to face. "We'll get to Kansas and you both can see each other again. How long have you two truly been together?" 

"...most part of a year." 

Hosea smiles, snorting gently when the younger man pushes him in embarrassment.

\--

Mexico had its share of fools gold and tricksters. Already the twins had lost the money in their pockets on a game of cards that quickly turned into a high risk gunfight. It landed Eli on bedrest and Jasper feeling guilty as Arthur tried, and failed, to rob a stagecoach alone. 

Hosea asks around the local village for Dutch in his limited Spanish, waving his hand above his head and chanting hombre alto like a prized parrot in a circus act. 

"He went for a drink," an older woman tells him clearly. "The one with the dark eyes?" 

Hosea drops his shoulders and nods. "With the mustache." 

She nods in return and points him in the direction of the saloon, a wide grin on her face as he tells her thank you and mutters an even quieter apology. Hosea follows the streets as a storm forms overhead, black clouds filled with lightning slowly coming their way. He hears distant thunder as he pushes the saloon doors open, his eyes roaming over the tables and empty space between the chairs and the bar where a couple dances slowly to unheard music. 

Hosea gives them their space as he approaches the barkeep, being greeted with a tired Cristo, otro americano. 

"Hola." he leans against the bar. "Uh... mi Español esta no muy bien." 

"At least you tried." the barkeep sets a glass on the counter harshly, reaching for a bottle Hosea couldn't see. "What do you want?" 

"I'm not here to drink." There's an audible sound of bottles clunking as the barkeep shoves it back into place. "I'm here to find my friend." 

"I have a lot of men come through here." 

Hosea nods, sliding his hands from the counter. "This one is tall." 

The barkeep shrugs. "A lot of tall ones, too." 

"Golden rings, two pistols. He would have ordered two shots of whisky if he was here." 

"Hm. Sure, I saw him. He's the bastard who's been coming around to stare at the girls for the last week. But he pays extra."

Susan was going to kill Dutch. 

"Do you know where I could find him?" 

The barkeep points upstairs. "Make him fuck off, would you? I've had enough of him." 

"Sure. Gracias, que tengas un buen día." 

The barkeep nods, watching Hosea as the blond finds the staircase and rushes up them to find Dutch and get him out of town. He gets stopped by a woman on the stairwell, both tripping over the lack of knowledge of each others languages before he repeats hombre alto and she points to the second door down the hall. He declines her service before slamming the side of his hand into the door, rapping against it until it swings open and shows an infuriated, half-dressed Dutch van der Linde. 

"What has gotten into you?" the younger man hisses.

"Where's your shirt?" the blond pushes in, apologizing to the lady who has covered herself. 

"I don't know-" he finds it under the bed, throwing it back at Dutch. "-but what's the rush?" 

"No rush." Hosea scoops the black boots up before shoving them into Dutch's chest. "I just want to see Susan gut you faster." 

"Oh please, she won't." 

"Won't she?" Hosea asks angrily as the other man pulls his boots on. "Dutch, you've-" 

"She won't, as long as you don't tell her." 

Hosea scoffs and pushes Dutch out of the room, bidding the young lady farewell as he shuts the door loudly behind them. "Get dressed, you fool." 

The other begins buttoning his shirt up, gunbelt resting over his shoulder. 

"Who does your loyalty lie with? Me? Or Susan?" 

Hosea spins around and glares, hands pushed firmly against his hips. 

"If I had a dollar for every time you second guessed my loyalty, I'd be rich by now." 

"Oh, we are rich, my friend." Hosea has left the other behind to begin down the stairs, stopping at the banister to peer down at the floor. "With those jewels I-we robbed from Rosser back in Idaho, ohho, we'll be rich real soon." 

The couple from before has been pushed to the side of the room, gripping each other as a dark clothed group of men meander the tables and the bar area. The barkeep is muttering something Hosea can't hear, suddenly being grabbed and smacked when his answer isn't good enough. He raises his hands in surrender, explaining something more as Dutch approaches Hosea from behind. 

The blond shoves him back before their eyes can meet with the shadowed figures below, dragging Dutchs belt from his shoulder and slapping it into his hand.

"Put it on." 

"What do you see?" 

"A whole gang of killers. They seem to be the similar sort the twins described." 

Dutch begins pulling his belt on as he nods. "It wouldn't surprise me. Arthur's told me he's seen them everywhere." 

A door opens behind them and both of them turn only to be met with the girl from before. She has dressed and sorted her hair, young eyes worried as she wanders closer. 

"I am so sorry." Dutch mutters. "But my friend and I? We have to go." 

The lady downstairs lets out a startled scream and Hoses tenses, eyes back on the banister before a gunshot rings out. 

"Dutch, does your lady friend know of any other exits?" 

"Exit?" The younger man asks. Hosea turns to find the girl shaking her head in confusion. "Door? Hosea, whats Spanish for exit?" 

"Damned if I know." 

The girl begins leading them down the hallway to a separate room where she knocks. The door opens and reveals the other working girls who have each grabbed guns, Dutch's acquaintance speaking to one quietly before Hosea quietly says exit.

"¿Una salida? Al final del pasillo." one of the ladies says. 

Dutch's girl takes their hands and guides them away, Hosea glancing over his shoulder to find the rest have followed them out. It spits them into a back alley that's well shaded and the home to a few stray animals. 

Hosea elbows Dutch as the girls separate, struggling to drag away Van Der Linde's friend. "Tell her to go with them." 

The dark haired man gently pushes her along, continuously waving as she demands something. The rest whisper to her and drag her away, Hosea pulling Dutch the other way down the alley. 

Its a quick escape through an awfully silent town for the two outlaws, Dutch finding humor in the situation to laugh about. They slow down outside of a ranch, Hosea watching a child play with its dog as the other man coughs his laughter away and stops The Count by Silver Dollar's side. 

"Hmm... I wonder what those boys wanted?" Dutch asks. 

"Same as you, maybe," the blond lifts his head. "But maybe they don't have their own women back at their camps or homes to care for. None that have devoted a decade of their lives to them."

"Oh, don't you try and scold me like you would Arthur, or the twins, or even Josiah, for that matter. I told you, it doesn't have to go past us." 

"And what would that make me? A further accomplice into your shit, Dutch." 

"Would you want me to tell Bessie if you did the same?" 

"I'm sickened that you think I would do that to her-" 

"Answer the question, Hosea." 

"I'd pray to God you would so she would be able to carry on to someone new. If I was so immature and did such a thing, I'd want her to know so she could find someone who would give her honesty and love. The honesty and love she deserved." 

"Well, Susan and I ain't the same!" 

"I noticed!" 

Both of the men ease back into their saddles, rage radiating from them as Hosea notices the child and its dog have both stopped playing to watch the riders arguing. He lifts his hand and tips his hat slowly, the kid raising its palm before he slips his foot from the stirrup and kicks Dutch in the leg. 

"Come on." 

"Why?" 

"So I can shout at you elsewhere." 

\-- 

They've set up camp within a canyon, Hosea having scraped together supplies for a fire while Dutch left to God knows where for a space of time. The younger man only arrives back when the fire is finished and Hosea is laying out his bedroll. The air grows cold as the night goes on, both wrapped in their coats and sitting close to the crackling fire as their empty stomachs growl. 

"This feels familiar." Dutch mutters across the fire. 

They'd spent numerous evenings in those first few months starving as they stared at fires together, usually an aftermath of jobs gone wrong and misguided decisions. It was a frequent occurrence before they finally clicked and stepped into a profitable rhythm together. It was before he felt comfortable enough introducing Bessie to Dutch, or even writing to her to get her hopes up. 

The older man finds the comment amusing, but his mind is still on the young girl from the saloon as well as the bartenders comments about Dutch. 

"I think I have some dried venison in my saddle." Hosea says quietly. 

"Why didn't you say so?" 

"Guess I forgot..." he watches as Dutch rolls to stand and approaches Silver Dollar, digging around in the saddlebags to find a few pieces. 

Hosea catches the jerky thrown his way and chews quietly as Dutch settles back in his spot and eats. There's a silence between them, the fire popping as a low rumble similar to horse hooves can be heard down a ways in the canyon. 

The older man stops chewing and raises his head, looking towards the horses who seem to be getting bothered by something. Hosea leans away from the fire and stares back at the way they had come, glaring against the harsh winds. He raises his head to the sky as a loud clap of thunder sounds, Silver Dollar huffing and retreating towards his owner. 

"It's alright, boy," Hosea says and pets his neck, Dutch soothing The Count as harsh rain begins to fall. 

They begin pulling the horses in to hitch to the rock before riders appear, a similar look to the men from the saloon.

"We've got visitors, Dutch." 

The younger man peers over his white horse, then steps around The Count. A bullet snatches his hat and Dutch grabs at his head, bolting away and behind a rock face. 

"They seem to be a shoot first, ask questions later type of gang." Dutch shouts from the other side of the small road. Hosea grabs his rifle from his saddle and spooks the two horses off, aiming around the corner as rain slides from the brim of his hat. 

Dutch has begun firing back, taking a rider down as Hosea cocks the gun and fires. A bullet scrapes his knuckle, the blond hissing and taking another shot. It collides with one of their heads, the body falling back and being pinned to the saddle as the mans feet are still hooked in the stirrups. They kill the riders, one of them turning tail to ride away but one of Dutch's bullets lodges in his knee and sends him into the ground. 

Hosea sets the rifle down and reaches into his coat for his bandana, wrapping his knuckles and holding the wound closed as the horses and their dead riders gallop past. The one still living squirms in the mud, attempting to push himself to stand to hop away. Dutch steps out from behind cover and walks after their enemy, Hosea lifting the rifle and carrying it over his shoulder as the younger man greets the injured man but elicits no response. 

He's trailing blood behind himself, his leg unnaturally straight as he tries hopping. Dutch tries again in broken Spanish but only receives spittle in his direction. He grabs the enemy by the collar and pulls, sending him on his ass. The kid is exactly that, a kid. He's barely older than Arthur when they had first found him in San Francisco, brown hair sticking to his face and angered eyes glaring at them. 

Hosea pushes the rifle into Dutch's hands and kneels next to the kid, the boy shivering in the rain. 

"¿Años?" the boy doesn't speak. 

"Do you have a name?" Dutch questions. 

"¿Nombre?" 

The boy hesitantly shakes his head, spewing something neither of them could understand. The two men share a look as the boy keeps blabbering, Dutch grinning as Hosea turns back to the boy and raises his hands. 

"Stop, stop!" the kid quiets down. "Tu... tu nec-necesitas ayuda. Me and him," Hosea points between himself and Dutch. "We'll let you go." 

"We will?" 

"Get his horse, Dutch. It didn't go very far." 

The younger man scoffs but does so anyways, the kid watching while the silhouette brings the young animal back. 

"Tu caballo," Hosea points to the horse. "Vamonos." 

The blond offers his good hand, the boy staring warily in the dark before grabbing his palm. It's a simple task of helping him stand, a not so simple task of getting him up into the saddle without Dutch's help. The boy stares at Hosea with rain running down his neck, his longer hair stuck to the sides of his cheeks as the blond takes a step back and motions wildly for him to leave. 

"Go!" he points. "¡Vamonos!" 

The boy grips the reigns, curling his fingers tightly into his palm. He snaps the reigns and rides off, leaving Hosea with the burning imprint of his eyes within the older mans mind. 

"How do you know he won't send more men after us?" Dutch asks. 

"I don't..." he shakes his head slightly, hand curled around the bandana as lightning strikes near them It momentarily illuminates the bodies strewn around them, just another imprint of theirs left behind in a seemingly innocent wilderness. "But I wasn't going to shoot a kid."

"You're too empathetic sometimes, Hosea." 

The conversation he'd had with Arthur during his first lesson in hunting springs back to mind and Hosea remembers what he had said. 

Just empathy. 

Just empathy.

There was a difference between killing a boy and a deer. The weight that would come to his mind and his shoulders, mostly, but also a vendetta against himself.

Hosea begins stomping their fire out, wiping his boot against the ground as the smoke lifts into the air and a question comes to his mind

"Would you have shot him, Dutch?" 

"No, I wouldn't have shot him. I would have left as soon as I could." 

Hosea turns partially to the other man, the thunder roaring above them as he speaks once more. 

"You would have left him there, then."

"Its better than letting the rest of his gang find us. Hosea, we are already bein' hunted in this country." 

"And who are we gonna blame for it this time?" 

Dutch raises a finger. "Don't. I wasn't blaming anyone." 

"You were coming to it-" 

"I don't want to kill a boy, but I couldn't tell the difference from far away. Now, we need to find the horses and leave." 

Hosea watches Dutch step away, the younger man leaning out of their small hideout to whistle loudly through the canyon. The blond knew that even if Dutch hadn't shot the boy, the most he would have done was leave him to bleed out on the canyon floor. That, or if the world was a little more unforgiving, it would have resulted in the boy dying alone from other causes in the middle of nowhere. 

Hosea tightens the bandana around his knuckles and huffs, his eyes lifting to an arm of the body that had been thrown from its saddle minutes before, the older man taking cautionary steps away.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hosea and Bessie plan on meeting Mary Gillis and her father.

**1885**

What did Mexico offer them? A whole lot of trouble produced by a snowball of Dutch and Hosea's desperate decisions. And what did they leave with? A bruised Arthur, often drunk Jasper, desperate Eli, a broken hearted but convicted Susan, and a few shards of bullets in their bodies.

A dumb decision from the very start.

Now, they were celebrating New Years outside of the Gaptooth Ridge mines in New Austin, yet again hired by miners to keep them safe. Though Arthur couldn't very well see out of one swollen eye, he had harshly wrapped a bandana around it, making a hazardous eye patch that made him look meaner and meant he didn't have to explain much to others.

The pay for protection wasn't bad. The two of them patrolling the perimiter of the miners camp for several bucks a day was good cash compared to the amount of botched robberies committed across the border.

"Whats gotten into everybody?" Arthur had asked.

Truly, what had?

Since getting a taste for expensive alcohol while robbing Rosser on the train, Jasper kept following moonshine and mixes of alcohol that, most times, left him out of commission and passed out by the fire. Eli was torn by it and confused, but ever since one of Jasper's bullets hit a girl by accident during a gunfight, he only kept going deeper into the bottle.

So many things had happened that Hosea felt no time was truly the right time to tell Susan about Dutch's acts in Mexico, nor did she ever give he or Bessie the time or an open ear, either. The girl Hosea found Dutch with had come to them with a few of the older working girls, demanding he do something about her being pregnant.

Pregnant.

No doubt being Dutch's child, he had shook his head and denied the claims, offering money if she left them alone and stayed quiet. The price racked up, and soon they were forking over valuables in exchange for silence on the matter. Dutch got his silence, from _everyone _once it came to light. Susan especially having ignored him for a long duration while he went from apologetic, to muttering accusations.

None of them had gotten the twenty-year-old pregnant, but somehow and in some way, Dutch connected some line of dots that made him innocent.

Stress. Issues. Lack of trust in his ideas.

Now Bessie was feeling ill in the New Austin desert and had only Susan to treat her. Jasper vanished a week and a half ago, and his brother packed his things to go after him only a few days back. Dutch was wandering the New Austin railway stations in search of something more as Hosea and Arthur sat with their rifles and watched the men push carts out of the mine.

"I don't rightly know." the older man had muttered in response.

"Seems like everyone's got somethin' wrong." Arthur shifts, the sound of his spurs clinging. "Jasper, Susan. Bessie, too. No offense,"

Hosea shakes his head, gently angered at the idea that he wasn't the one sitting at Bessie's bedside treating her and keeping her well. Not to say Susan wasn't capable. No, she had treated them all for something and it seemed they each got better with her firmer kind of love.

"And me?"

"Huh?"

"You said there's something wrong with all of us. What's different about me?"

Arthur thinks for a moment, the sound of a minecart squeaking down the rails.

"You're angrier. Not outright, not like my daddy was-" they all knew Lyle was an abusive bastard. "-but you're still mad. You snap at the twins and me more often, and you and Dutch seem to argue a lot more. Susan likes to brood with you."

Hosea lets out a gentle laugh at the final comment, but sobers quickly. "I'm sorry, Arthur. I don't search you out to take my anger out on, you know that?"

Arthur nods, dirty red bandana flapping in the wind. "I know."

"I suppose everything seems to be out of place all of a sudden. And I don't want to bore you, but-"

"You don't gotta explain anythin' to me if you don't want to. Dutch talked up a big storm 'bout Mexico, and about the riches and deals we could get. Now, Jasper's drunk somewhere in the desert and theres a poor girl getting ready to give birth to Dutch's illegitimate child across the border. I get it. If I was friends with someone for almost ten years and this all happens, I'd be mad too."

Arthur was thinking for himself.

Fantastic.

Now only if they could get him to a town and get him a bath.

The two men finish their appointed shift and agree to ride back to camp for the night to find and check up on the rest of the gang. With any luck, Bessie would be better and Eli would have brought Jasper back. Camp was designated in Rio Bravo, near the railroad tracks. It wasn't too long of a ride, Boadicea and Silver Dollar taking them past the new town, Tumbleweed, to the curve of the tracks and the cliff face behind the railway station.

Smoke can be seen rising from the fire as they trot beneath the railway bridge and follow the trail into the diverging road. It leads them to camp where everyone seems to be in high spirits, even previously ill Bessie and a brooding Susan. Occasionally sober Jasper even seems to cheer when he spots the two men arriving back, Dutchs tall body turning to them before he outstretches his arms.

"You're back!" he shouts. "Have I got some good news for you!"

Arthur shares a cautious glance with Hosea as they begrudgingly leave their saddles.

"And what could that possibly be?" the oldest man asks as his boots hit the ground, his attention and care immediately turned to Bessie wrapped in a blanket.

"I have a friend from San Francisco I've kept contact with these last few years, and he says Wyoming might be good pickings for men like us."

Hosea brushes his thumb over Bessie's knuckles, shaking his head gently.

"You said this about Mexico, and look at what happened there."

"The Del Lobos sure as shit ain't in Wyoming."

"The Del Lobos weren't the only things giving us issues, Dutch."

The other pauses, then nods and continues as Arthur walks past and sits himself beside a tired and dusty Eli.

"Sure, but things will be different."

"Will they?" Susan asks. Dutch turns slowly, their eyes meeting for a strong stare.

"Yes, _Susan_, they will. I know it!"

Hosea begins guiding Bessie back to their tent with a shake of his head. "We only just got out of Mexico. And we've got those jewels to still sell. We already know Josiah isn't coming back with the cash like he said he would."

"He just weren't ready for Mexico." Arthur argues.

"None of us were, darling." Bessie runs her fingers through his hair as the couple passes he and Eli.

"And Arthur and I," Hosea continues as he lets go of Bessie's hands. "We've got that deal with the miners at Gaptooth. It isn't robbery, or killing, but it pays and puts us to work."

"I thought you wanted out of the desert, Hosea." Dutch says as he grows closer. "I didn't think I'd hear you arguing to stay."

"I'm not arguing. I'm explaining."

Dutch tilts his head slightly, dark eyes fierce. "Wyoming territory sure does sound interesting..."

The blond stares back at the younger man, making sure to hold his stare. "Arthur and I will finish the work for the miners. Then, we'll talk about Wyoming."

The dark brows fidget before Dutch nods slowly and steps back, confusion clear in his face and eyes. Hosea turns back to his wife and kisses her softly before wishing the gang goodnight to join her on their bedrolls.

She wriggles to adjust the woven blanket, curling closer to her husband as she tries to warm him in the cold desert night. He slides his arms under the blanket and presses his nose against her head, one hand resting on her hip while the other gently plays with her hair. She moves again, this time to press their legs together before she lets out a content sigh and relaxes.

"How do you feel?" he whispers.

She gives a gentle and positive sounding hum, a finger sliding across his knuckles. "Better. And you?"

"...tired. But I realized that soon it'll be our twenty year anniversary."

"Shit." she whispers. He snorts and she shares his quiet laughter, only pressing closer. "How much longer 'til twenty years?"

"Three more Autumn's."

"Only three? Wow... you know, there's no one else I would have wanted to spend the last twenty years of my life with?"

"We've spent a majority of them around _Dutch_."

"We didn't marry Dutch, did we?"

"I surely hope not."

Her arm slides to rest over his waist. "No, we didn't. We've had our times without having to worry about Dutch, or a gang, or a group of outlaws, or being shot in our sleep."

"Those seven years between us getting married, and my having met Dutch sure were bliss, hm?"

"They were good and bad for their own reasons. Just as everything is. We had our own home, but you and I were tortured by having to work and live under my parents eye every hour of those seven years. I've learned more being on the run with you than I did in my years at school."

"Now, that isn't true."

"Not really, no. But, I have learned quite a few things I _wouldn't _have learned had we not left."

Hosea shifts himself slightly and sighs. "There's a lot of things I wish you didn't need to learn."

"I was never really innocent, honey."

He can hear her grin in her voice, smiling to himself softly.

"Yeah, I know. That might have been what drew us together."

"That, and you were _oh-so-charming_." they laugh softly again, holding each other closer. They can hear the low murmur of Eli and Arthur outside, Jasper having gone to sleep while Dutch and Susan left for the horses.

"What...?" Hosea begins.

"Hm?"

"What do you think will happen with Susan?"

Bessie is quiet for a short while as she thinks over her husbands question. Soon, she shifts and shrugs gently, their fingers intertwining.

"She doesn't see reason to be with him anymore, but I don't think she'll leave the gang without a push."

"Really?"

"She loves Arthur and the twins, and has a deep loyalty to everyone here. They may be _our_ boys, but she is as much the matriarch as Dutch is the self-appointed patriarch, so I think her sense of loyalty will make her stay. Unless, maybe someone she really trusted left."

"She only trusts Dutch."

"That won't be true for a while. He got a girl pregnant while separately preaching his love to Susan because he thought he might get away with it. Someone almost a decade younger than Susan, a girl _Arthur's _age. Not to mention Dutch is ten_years_ that girls senior..."

"So Susan isn't trusting Dutch right now?"

"Of course not. Would you trust me if I did such a thing to you?" He grows silent and Bessie lifts her head after a quiet several seconds. "Hosea."

"I'm enough of a fool that I might."

She sighs, wiggling herself back under his chin. "I appreciate the sentiment, darling."

"Just not when relating to Susan?"

"I only want the best for her. Dutch isn't the best. Far from it, actually... if I could tell him exactly what I thought of him-"

"I can feel your heart quickening, honey-"

"-I'd end up tearing him a new one."

Hosea snorts, then both of them jokingly shush one another in the comfort of their tent. He enjoys the peaceful quiet that follows, only interrupted by the calming sound of Arthur's careful and deep voice, crickets and other animals communicating in the dark.

Bessie suddenly whispers. "What's for us in Wyoming, do you think?"

He clears his throat and huffs. "I don't know. If it's a connection on the Rosser train, it sounds good, but I won't get my hopes up."

"We're all still reeling from Mexico."

"That wasn't just _his _fault. Though he was a damn good contributer."

"It was both of yours. The whole gang's, really, since we put blind trust in and decided to follow." 

"I'm sorry, darling," he drapes his leg over her own. "I guess I kept listening to what he had to say and kept believing it."

"No, you can't put the blame on just Dutch this time. I know his preaching sounds pretty when we're in low places, but you're smarter than that and can think for yourself. Like Arthur, you're an independent man."

"But unlike Arthur, I didn't grow up listening to him."

That was probably why Dutch's words sounded so sweet when they met. Growing up in a woodsy cabin with an ill mother and an absent hole where other family should be, to losing his first friends in war and almost dying trying to find work away from Delware, his words were like a lullaby into violent madness.

It must have sounded a whole lot nicer to a young kid who only knew abuse, death, and a whole lot of violence.

"That means you're more than capable of thinking for yourself. Which is something we need to teach Arthur soon."

"Arthur has his own opinions, it's just giving him the confidence to speak them."

"He's sure been confident ever since meeting Mary."

A bounce in his step and an air of confidence never before seen was what Mary Gillis bestowed upon Arthur Morgan. He wore his heart on his sleeve and regularly sent mail back and forth to Gillis, who often told them of her father's plans and which state they would be going to next.

Something clicks in Hosea's head and Bessie evidently feels him tense, for she lifts her head and looks at him.

"Mary's father is going to be in the Wyoming territory soon to buy a stake in a livestock company." he whispers gently. "That must be why Dutch decided to go. For Arthur."

Her hum isn't of much agreement, only acknowledgement as she lowers her head again and stares at the fabric ceiling.

"You don't think the same, do you?" he asks her.

She rolls her head to look at him, grey eyes dancing over his lips and nose. "Papa Gillis won't be the only rich man in Wyoming around that time. I don't think its a gift to Arthur, us going up there _only _so the lovebirds can see one another again."

"I'm sure Dutch only sees dollar bills and expensive drinks with his name on it, but it's a big coincidence for us to be going there suddenly."

"_And_ around the same time Arthur got the newest letter from Mary?" Her tone becomes sarcastic. "Huh, funny how the world works..." 

-

Hosea drops Jasper's limp arm, Arthur letting go as well to watch the drunken body fall hard against the ground. The older man shifts and steps back, his eyes flicking to the lake in front of them.

"Sober him up."

Arthur grabs Jasper by the suspenders and hoists him to stand, shoving him off the shore and into the water. Jasper hits it with a loud splash, suddenly and abruptly flailing his limbs as he whips his head side to side.

"I'm drownin'!" he shouts. "I'm drownin'! Help me!"

Arthur stands beside him, the water coming up to his calves as Jasper continues clawing at the sand, throwing mud and rocks up from the lake bed before the older man beside him grabs him by the shoulder and dunks him under again. Jasper comes up hissing, cursing Arthur and everything he loves before pausing once he realizes he was sitting up and very obviously _not _at risk in the water.

Arthur bends over, his hands on his knees as he brings his face to Jasper's. The other young man turns slowly in bewilderment, bringing his hand from the water to check the grass covering his hand.

"Good mornin'!" Arthur shouts loudly. It causes the other to jump, then curse and dry retch.

"Ugh..." Jasper cups his head, screwing his eyes shut. "There's better ways to wake a man."

"Sure." Hosea speaks from the shore. "We'll try them when you start acting like one."

Jasper coughs and accepts Arthur's hand, stumbling once on his feet and dropping heavily against the shore. The two other men share a look, Arthur slightly amused as he shifts his weight to his back foot and listens to the slurred, tired, and unintelligible words of the man on the ground.

"Whats goin' on, fellers?" they hear from the sand. Hosea tilts his head and stares at Jasper, the younger man squinting against the sun and trying to block it with his fingers. "Did I do something wrong?"

"You've got a fifty dollar bounty on your head, my friend," Arthur explains. "And by how you've been acting these last couple of months, _I _might be the one to take you in for the money."

"Oh, that ain't fair-" Jasper sits up and makes a guttural noise, laying his hand over his gurgling stomach. "-I don't even remember any of it! What I even do?"

"You've been mainly drunk and disorderly, you robbed a couple guys, got caught, then stabbed them when they tried taking their money back. You've been _so _drunk, a couple lawmen wanted to arrest you for vagrancy and inappropriate relationships."

"Well... can't do nothin' if I don't remember nothin'." Jasper argues quietly.

"You almost got your brother killed, Jasper." Hosea says. The younger man stares at his damp boots, his eyes suddenly becoming cold and hard. "You remember that, and how quick you were to sell out your brother and the rest of us to a some lawmen for a few quarters and a bottle of beer-"

"I didn't mean-"

"Let me finish!" Jasper's jaw clenches, his fingers curling into his fists. "You're lucky this country's as big as it is, or else we'd all be swinging at the gallows. It sounded like it was _easy _for you to sell us out, Jasper. How would you have felt had you sobered up and found out another one of your brothers was dead, this time because of you? Triplets, twins, they're supposed to stick together, right?"

Jasper nods slowly, swallowing thickly. "My brothers and me..." he says hoarsely. "We always promised to stick together, Eli, Will and me. Then Will died and..."

Hosea crouches beside him, folding his hands as he watches tears fall from Jasper's eyes. The younger man sniffs and coughs, turning his head away shamefully.

"You've got to put the bottle away, Jasper." he tells him gently. "Its either now, or a long, drunk road ahead of you."

That road was what made his father into a downright bastard, and he wasn't going to let Jasper continue this any longer.

"How close was he to dyin'?"

"Eli?" Jasper nods. "Too close. Far too close. Your brother needs you sober, Jasper. He loves you."

The young man glares at the ground, tears running off his cheeks and onto the front of his shirt as he nods gently. "I love him too..."

-

Jasper and Eli reconcile on the road from New Austin to the Wyoming territory, their trip cutting through the southwestern corner of Kansas and taking them into Colorado.

Hosea spots a wagon full of green scarves, bandanas, and vests, and motions for Arthur to be at the ready. This was Colm's hate filled land, the mark of Eoin's death and gravesite and a place where the memory of Dutch's actions fueled a vengeful fire. He orders the twins to be quiet and keep their mouths shut while Dutch, their ever smart leader, happily pranced through on the back of his stark white horse. Susan keeps close to the younger men and keeps bullets in the chamber of her gun while they ride, a camp being set up in a hidden corner Hosea had found their previous time through.

"Are you sure we should be stopping?" Jasper asks Dutch quietly after the sun has set and most the watch shift has been organized. "I know Colm O'Driscoll is still pretty mad about what you did to his brother..."

"We all need to rest, son. We can't try to power through to Wyoming, _that _would be a deathwish."

"Couldn't we have avoided this state altogether? Taken the long way 'round, or at least have thought of some other roads? Every thing here is O'Driscoll related."

"Stop your worryin'. I've dealt with Colm for years, and won't stop at killin' men now. A few green-colored bastards in Colorado won't stop us, son. Go on, get to sleep. You're on watch after Arthur."

Jasper tenses his shoulders but steps back at Dutch's word, immediately going to his brother's side.

Hosea and Bessie stay up and cuddle in front of the fire, mainly to keep distant company to Arthur, but they had also been missing the peacefulness of the Colorado wilderness. Hosea shifts and lays his head on his wife's shoulder, her fingers trailing up and down the side of his hand in slow motions. He feels himself drifting in and out of sleep, sounds stopping and starting, his focus on his wife's gentle breathing slowly becoming lost as he grows unconscious.

Dreams hadn't come often since Mexico. He saw the boy from the Del Lobos gang when he shut his eyes, a young teen unsure of what the two adults standing over him were going to do. Other times, it was the twenty-year-old Dutch got pregnant, giving birth to a fool's child without proper company. Occasionally the ghosts would watch from the dark, but they never came closer. The bodies only stood there in the distance, watching, waiting, staring in the treeline while the night grew silent and all he could hear was his own breathing. Nightmares were few and far between, too. He just slept, then awoke and felt no difference. It was unnatural to have such a numbness about himself, as if the shift in everyone had shifted the emotions within.

Hosea hears a crying baby and opens his eyes, waiting several seconds while the wood crackles before settling back against Bessie, having scared himself out of a growing nightmare. Her fingers still glide against the side of his hand, now coming to his pinky knuckle and down again.

Three days later, he's downing a glass of whisky in Cañon City, shutting his eyes as he feels the drink burn down his throat. Jasper and Eli are talking business as Arthur stands on the older man's other side, shifting repeatedly. Hosea sets a coin on the bar and asks for another shot, this time sliding it to the young man beside him.

"Thanks..." Arthur throws his head back and his throat bobs as he swallows the alcohol. He grits his teeth and sets the glass back against the bar, briefly meeting Hosea's eyes.

"How are you today, Arthur?"

The young man shrugs and rolls his wrist. "Same as usual. Don't have nothin' to complain about."

The older man leans further against the bar as the twins continue chattering. "Anything on your mind? Maybe you have thoughts or questions about Wyoming..."

Arthur only shakes his head, attempting to give a neutral look. "Nope."

"So you're acting shifty and drawing attention to yourself for no reason?" the green eyes hit Hosea's small grin. "Come on... you can lie better than that."

The corner of Arthur's mouth tilts and he crosses his arms over his chest, suddenly and abruptly stilling himself. "I guess I'm anxious about seein' Mary again."

"Not excited?" the younger man shrugs. "What's on your mind?"

"Well, her father, most of all. He's supposed to be in Wyoming and I got concerns about what Dutch is plannin' on pullin'."

Hosea hands cash to the brothers and begins guiding Arthur out of the saloon. "Something grand and attention-grabbing, no doubt."

"And he seems so pleased with it all, that I ain't sure I wanna talk to him about it. He doesn't really hear me when he's focused on something."

They step out into a cool breeze, both of them catching wind of manure as a goods wagon passes on the road. "He's busy planning and mapping everything in his head, and enjoys getting focused on it. I understand you don't want to interrupt him, but its a subject that needs to be brought up sooner rather than later."

Arthur nods as they follow the road back to the hitching posts. "I can't ask him to _not _rob someone."

"You're worried he's planning on grabbing Mr.Gillis' money?" the young man nods. "I don't think he'd do that to you... not purposefully. Well-" he stops, carefully pushing his hands into his coat pockets. "Maybe I... don't know."

The younger man is nodding again. "Susan..."

"Bah!" Hosea waves it off, but lets a strangled breath from his mouth as they continue walking. "It depends on what Gillis might have on him."

"Money, Hosea. Money to gamble, money to _whore_. Money for alcohol and other fine past times."

The older man chuckles. "You don't sound quite fond of him."

"I only met him once or twice, but he's somethin' else."

Hosea greets their horses and begins untying Silver Dollar from the post. "A rich and spoiled man who's forgotten his ways?"

"I don't know. Maybe there was kindness in him once, but that was a lifetime ago and long gone. The only good to come from him is his daughter."

The blond hooks his fingers around the horn and watches Arthur over the horses. "If we met with him, do you think he might have a different outlook?"

Arthur slows with the reigns and stares. "You mean who as...?"

"Bessie and I. She's far more educated in whichever world Gillis comes from, perhaps she could flip something in his opinion."

"What about you? You're still a liar and a conman."

Hosea winks, dragging himself into the saddle alongside the younger man. "That's my job, Arthur. I'll con him into thinking I'm better than I truly am. It worked with Bessie."

"Nah, she sees the real goodness." he blurts. "She didn't marry a lie."

The older man contemplates the young man's words in the saddle before nodding and turning away. "Mary's father is a fool to not see the goodness in you. But maybe all the goodness in the world was drained from him and all he can see are lost achievements."

"There's too much he's sour about."

"Well, as you get older and usually wiser, there seems to be a lot more to be sour about. Everything depends on how you look at it and how you deal with the thorns. You can prick your finger and get mad, or think about your actions and get around them."

"You can't avoid thorns forever, Hosea."

He shakes his head. "Of course not. They're inevitable."

They're strolling down the main road when Arthur says: "Maybe he never had someone like you to talk to."

"A conman and a liar?"

Arthur chuckles. "You're that, but like I said, Bessie didn't marry a lie. If she saw too much bad and sin in you, I doubt she would've married you and left the East."

"Remember, she isn't an innocent damsel."

"Oh, I know." many times these last several years Arthur had witnessed her stab, shoot, and strangle notorious men without a second thought. "I've seen what you two have in common."

Hosea feigns offense and the young man laughs louder, the two of them turning off of the main street to head towards the outskirts. "Think about it, huh?"

"What you mean?"

"About Bessie and I possibly meeting Mary's father. I don't know if it _would _make a difference, but at least Mister Gillis would know you have good people in your life. I don't think Bessie could be much better."

"You either, Hosea. You've... I've got a lot to thank you for." he turns his head slightly to look at the young man, but Arthur is focused on the wagon in front of them. "I think it's a good idea, but I might have to think on it some more.

Hosea nods grinning to himself while he turns his attention to the same train of wagons in front of them.


End file.
